


Out Of The Void

by Lynds



Series: The Spaces In Between [1]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Canon Divergence - Thor: The Dark World, Clint Is a Good Bro, Clint has heart, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Loki, Fucking with Norse Myths for my own ends, Genderbending, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) is a Good Bro, Loki Angst, Loki Feels, Loki Has Issues, Loki Needs a Hug, Loki's Kids, M/M, Male Sigyn, Past Torture, Poor Loki, Poor Tony, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Swearing, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Why Loki hates Jotunheim so much, in the past - he's male now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-16 15:06:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9277346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/pseuds/Lynds
Summary: Tony goes to help out with the Battle of Greenwich and ends up stuck on Svartalfheim with a half-dead Loki. He's tempted (very tempted) to leave him there, but the screams are kinda getting to him. He takes him home and patches him up...and then realises that there's way more to the Trickster than meets the eye.





	1. Planet Osiris

**Author's Note:**

> What's that? Finish one multi-chapter fic before I start another? Psssshhh! Why would I do a thing like that?
> 
> This is mostly planned out, but since I'm posting before finishing I might not be able to keep up a regular schedule. Which also means if there's anything you want to see in later chapters, let me know and I might stick it in there! There will be kids in later chapters, but no M-Preg - Loki shapeshifted into a woman. He's not gender fluid, he identifies as male in this fic, but he's magic, and he does what he wants.

Tony threw a circuit board across the room. It was no use. He’d been up for thirty six hours and his hands shook too much for delicate soldering. This was the third time he’d fucked up the same board. He needed sleep. He wanted sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, the darkness behind his lids turned into the darkness of deep space, the army, the fall. He shook his head violently and gave up on the lab, instead marching into the kitchen for another cup of coffee. He sat on a stool at the breakfast bar and poked the Twitter app on his Stark phone.

Darcy Lewis (@DarcyTheGreat): Hey @SHIELD assholes, pick up your phone. There’s some freaky shit going down in Greenwich and we could do with some backup.

Tony thought about it for a moment. It’s not like she’d asked for _his_ help. Sure, he liked the kid, she made great coffee when he and Dr Foster had a science marathon, and she had a better sense of humour than anyone else he knew. Hell, she even laughed at jokes _he_ thought were ‘too soon’. He could ignore the situation, go back upstairs and try to sleep again. That would be the sensible thing to do. But the bed was empty, and would be empty for the foreseeable future. Pepper had finally got sick of him and his constant nightmares. Extremis had been the last straw. Tony rubbed his face with both hands and downed the last of his coffee. “JARVIS, deploy the mark XLVII.”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea, sir.”

“Yeah, that makes two of us. But since when have I had good ideas?”

“Fair point, sir.”

“Ooh, sassy, JARV.”

***

The flight to London passed in a blur, which concerned Tony. He was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep at least twice across the Atlantic. Luckily JARVIS made an excellent autopilot, and he flew up the Thames with bleary eyes. Buzzing Tower Bridge gave him a shot of adrenaline, which he was going to need if the giant black ship parked outside the Royal Naval College was any indication. Well, where else would you park a big flying knife? He spotted Thor quickly, and flew towards him…

…and London turned into a massive black desert.

“What the fuck?”

The suit went offline, jets sputtering and sparking, and Tony fell out of the sky, yelling. He hit the ground in a cloud of dust and sand. Now he knew what a meteorite felt like.

“Oh, man. That was unpleasant. JARVIS, can you hear me?”

Nothing. Tony pressed the sequence into a manual reset button on the inside of one of his gauntlets, and lay on the black sand panting. Not like he could do anything else until the suit had boosted up again. He thought he could hear shouting and fight sounds somewhere behind him, and tensed up until they disappeared as suddenly as they’d started. Time to do some working out. Considering Thor was involved, and some weird spaceship, he’d probably passed through some space portal, and this was almost certainly some other planet. Fucking marvellous. He should have sat Thor down and got a bit more info on what else was out there while he had the chance, but Lion-O had run off with String Bean faster than you could say ‘Daddy has an army bigger than little adopted brother's and we’re not sharing the shiny semi-sentient box’.

“Sir? Mr Stark, can you hear me?”

“JARVIS? Oh, it’s good to hear you, buddy.” Tony pushed himself off the volcanic sand and stood up. “Can you find another of those portals back to London?” He looked up to see eight discs hovering above the planet, eight different scenes. “Uh, yeah, I think I’ve found it. Them. Umm, which one’s earth?”

“I believe the second from the left, sir.” The targeting system on his HUD bracketed the correct portal.

“Thanks JARVIS.” He engaged repulsors and lifted off, heading home. He was half way there when the Greenwich ship appeared in midair. “Woah! What the hell!” He swerved violently as the thing fell, and as it landed in a mushroom cloud of dust, the portals blinked out of existence. “Shit! Shit, shit fucking shit balls! JARVIS, can you find us another way home?”

“I’m sorry, sir, all the portals have disappeared, including the little invisible one you passed through on the way here.”

“Shit!” Tony landed on the top of a slope, overlooking the crashed spaceship and tried to calm his racing heart. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Sir, you are on the verge of a panic attack, please try to slow your breathing.”

“Yeah, I think it’s justified right now, JARVIS.” He popped the suit and leaped out, suddenly claustrophobic. The air on the unknown planet tasted of blood or iron, but he could feel a breeze, so that was nothing like deep space. There was sound here, and no alien army, and he could feel the grit under his pants as he sat down, head between his legs, gasping.

It took him a few minutes to talk himself down. Head hanging low, exhausted, he walked back into the suit. “OK, JARVIS, can you find any civilisations?”

“I have been scanning the surrounding area, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t found anything that could represent a road or dwelling.” 

“Right, of course we’ve landed on Planet Ass End of Nowhere. OK. Bear Grylls always says sort out shelter first. Any suggestions?” He took to the air, trying to focus on the task at hand, rather than the fact that he was trapped in a volcanic Gobi desert.

“There is a cave system half a kilometre south west of your position, sir. Judging by preliminary geological surveys it should be deep enough to shelter from storms, and high enough to avoid flash flooding if such a thing is possible on this planet.”

“Awesome. Iron Man one, Planet Hades zero.”

“If you’re planning to name this planet in the same pattern as those in our own solar system, we’ve already chosen one for a god of the underworld.”

“Yeah, but this one’s probably not even in our solar system, so maybe we’d better name it after the Egyptian gods or something. Planet Osiris it is.”

“Very good, sir.”

“So, water and food next, right? Any rivers or lakes nearby?”

“I cannot detect any traces of water here, but we have not mapped the whole planet yet.”

“Stay positive, that’s the way to do it. What about plants or animals? Anything I can eat?”

JARVIS was quiet, scanning for a moment. “Sir, I’ve detected possible signs of life in the middle of the plane to your left.”

“Think it’s edible?” He banked and pulled up to the marked shape on the HUD. “Woah, what’s happened here?”

“It looks like there was a battle, sir.”

“Yeah, no shit.” The ground was littered with bodies, not long dead. They were obviously alien, well, more so than the Ass-guardians and less so than the Chitauri, and all were partially covered with sand. The one marked as living was lying on its back, perfectly still. “Are you sure that thing’s alive? Ah, Jeez, It’s wearing clothes, I can’t eat something sentient. It’s not going to jump up and eat me, is it?”

“I can’t be sure, sir.”

“What is the point of you?”

“I get your obscure Sherlock references, sir?”

“True.” He edged closer to the body, gauntlet repulsors ready. The greyish humanoid twitched and took a wheezing breath, but didn’t turn. “This guy’s not sounding too hot.”

“He seems to have been stabbed through the chest.”

“How the hell is he still alive?” As Tony voiced the thought, a green and gold glow shimmered from the chest wound, and the alien arched back, screaming in pain. Tony flinched and took a step backwards. “Jesus, that’s disturbing. What’s going on, JARVIS?” The creature screamed again, then flopped back to the ground, still once more apart from rapid breaths. 

“It seems like the glow is some sort of healing power, sir. The wound has decreased in size by 3.6%.” Tony stepped forward again. “Might I recommend caution, sir? If the creature regains consciousness he may see us as a threat.”

“Yeah, but he might also know a way off this rock.” He knelt down next to the alien and frowned. “Hold on…JARVIS…shit, is that…is that _Loki?_ ” He jerked backwards and took to the air again. “Shit, that’s fucking Loki! What the fuck is he doing here? What the fuck…why did it have to be _fucking Loki?_ ” He screamed the last words. There was no way any of this was fair. He held up his repulsors, pointed at Loki, activated the guns. He wanted to shoot the bastard. It was his fault he couldn’t sleep at night, his fault Pepper left so soon. Without Loki and his selfish, sibling rivalry invasion he would have probably been able to convince her he wasn’t a complete waste of space for another few years, but ever since that portal and the Chitauri, he couldn’t even hear reminders of New York without collapsing. He wanted to kill him. He SHOULD kill him! He raised the rest of his weapons, all pointed at the still figure lying on the ground…

He couldn’t do it. He turned the suit around and flew across the orange sky, tears tracing lines down his face, swearing incoherently. Eventually he landed on the top of a ridge and shoved his way out of the suit, curled up over his knees and sobbed.


	2. Magic Glowy Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony takes shelter from the storm, and pity on the enemy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to give you guys fair warning...this fic is shaping up to be the angstiest thing I've ever written. There will be a LOT of crying. Hope that's OK!

A weak crescent moon hung over the black sand when he finally scrubbed his face dry and dragged himself into the suit again. JARVIS sounded subdued. “Sir, energy levels at 60%.”

“Thanks JARV. Never thought I’d say this, but let’s head to the cave. Maybe there’s an underground river in there.”

They flew past Loki’s body, which Tony refused to glance at. The guy was screaming again. He could hear him when they landed in the cave system. It sounded like he was sobbing this time, too.

“Sir, there’s a sandstorm coming in from the south. May I advise moving further into the system?”

“How long before it hits?”

“Ten minutes, sir.”

He nodded and marched further into the cave, the arc reactor casting a blue glow on the walls. He spotted a smooth, rounded area, like a little bubble, which would hold his body heat better than the rest of the cavern. “That’ll do.” He wasn’t thinking about another sentient being mostly dead on the plain. He was definitely _not_ thinking about a mass-murdering would-be world conquerer crying in pain.

“Fucking hell.”

He flew back to the plain and hovered over Loki’s body. The guy was back to lying still, the green and gold light having disappeared. “What’s his status now, JARVIS?”

“The wound has closed a further 2.8%.”

“Jeez, it’s slow going.”

 “Faster than human healing, sir.”

“Ha ha.”

“May I ask what you’re planning?”

“I should probably put him out of his misery, shouldn’t I?”

“I am not programmed to have opinions on euthanasia unless they pertain to yourself, sir.”

“Fuck it.” He landed and knelt over Loki, flinching as his hands drew nearer to his body. Part of him expected those blue eyes to snap open and yell ‘boo!’ before he got thrown across the planet again. No windows this time, at least. He steeled himself and slipped his arms under the guy’s chest and legs, then lifted him. When Loki groaned, he startled and nearly dropped him. “Ugh. Hold on, Ozymandias, we’re getting you out of the sand storm. You better appreciate this, you bastard.”

***

The storm howled around the caverns, whistling past the openings and making eerie music. Loki’s intermittent stupidly painful healing sessions didn’t help Tony’s nerves either, but his skin was starting to look less grey. 

Some hours later, Tony jerked awake, still inside the suit. He blinked and ran his tongue over his disgusting teeth. Coffee. Why was there never any coffee on freaky alien worlds? New rule - always carry coffee. In fact, he was going to install a coffee machine in the mark XLVIII’s hip, like a little hip flask. One side coffee, one side alcohol. He was pretty sure he could distill it from his own urine. No, that would be disgusting…

He climbed out of the suit so he could rub the sleep out of his eyes and stretch properly. Loki was still out of it, but he looked a bit more asleep than dead now. In fact, he looked unpleasantly asleep, his body twitching and face scrunched up. “Huh. Guess even evil alien overlords get nightmares.” 

“Please, no, not her…mother! I beg you…”

Tony turned away. If someone had told him he’d be watching his enemy writhing in fear and pain he would probably have been delighted. But faced with the reality, it just felt too close for comfort.

“I know nothing else! I swear, I cannot take you…I cannot…”

He squeezed his eyes shut, then called the gauntlets to him. He held Loki’s arms down. “Hey, asshole, it’s just a dream. Hey! Calm down…it’s OK, it’s just me.” 

Loki whimpered and turned his face away. “Please, no…”

Tony grimaced, then took one of his hands out of the gauntlet, leaving it behind on Loki’s arm. He cupped his cheek. “Hey, shhh, shhhh, it’s OK. You’re safe. No-one’s going to hurt you. I’ll look after you, OK?” He carried on stroking the god’s cheek, and felt him relax, pressing his face into the touch. Eventually his breathing evened out and the tension drained from his body, lowering him into a deeper sleep. 

“Well, that was fun.” Tony backed away from Loki again and pulled the helmet on. “What’s his status, JARVIS?”

“His chest wound is 10% smaller than it was when we first saw him. If we compare his brainwaves to the data taken just before he and Master Odinson left the tower, I would say he is likely to regain consciousness some time today.”

“Oh, yay.”

“If I may, sir, there are considerable differences between the brainwaves I can detect now, and those I measured while he was incarcerated in the Hulk tank and during his conversation with you in the penthouse before the battle.”

“What kind of differences, JARV?”

“His brain signature profile during his nightmare just now has several similarities with the BSP displayed during the invasion, but there was an added spike of activity in his amygdala throughout that time that is absent now, and during the nightmare. In fact, I have found no evidence of this particular spike in his brain map since his encounter with Dr Banner.”

“What are you saying, JARVIS?”

“There is insufficient evidence to formulate a conclusion. It was just the analysis of his vital signs and my comparison to data taken during the invasion that flagged up the disparity.”

“Huh. OK, well, keep monitoring and let me know if that spike in the amygdala pops up again.”

“Of course, sir. I believe Master Odinson is waking up now, sir.”

“Shit.” Tony took the helmet off and sat in Loki’s eyeline, far enough to avoid a close range attack, and close enough that he didn’t take the god by surprise. 

Loki started to rub his eyes and groaned as the movement pulled torn muscles. He tried to raise himself up, and Tony couldn’t help himself. “Hey, stay down, man, you’re going to undo all the magic glowy healing you’ve been doing.”

Bad idea. Loki startled hard and leaped back against the wall, all signs of being half dead hidden under layers of adrenaline and badassery. “What are you doing here, Midgardian?”

“Woah, there Rudolph, cool it. Peace.”

“What. Are you. Doing. Here?”

“I don’t know, OK? I came to London to help Darcy and Thor and that lot out with some crazy alien shit, I was just flying through the air, minding my own business, and suddenly I zap out over fucking Mordor here. My suit goes all haywire for a bit, I have to do a hard reset, and before I can get back to Earth, all the portals disappear.”

Loki slumped to the floor again. “They succeeded, then. The convergence is over.”

“Yeah, whatever, I have no idea. So what are you doing here? Nearly dying, clearly.”

He closed his eyes and utter despair passed across his face. “I thought I was dead, at last. I thought I could finally be _done_. Be with _them_. Why am I not dead?”

It was probably a rhetorical question, but Tony had always been facetious. “I guess it had something to do with the green and gold glowy shit. About every half hour you’d go all nuclear on me, the light would pour out of your chest there and you’d be screaming. It was…uh…disconcerting.”

Loki dropped his head back against the wall. “I do not understand. I was supposed to die.” He looked around him at the cavern. “Maybe Thor did something when he dragged me in here.”

“Uh, I don’t think so. I found you out on the plains, I brought you in here. Felt a bit bad leaving you out in a sandstorm.”

If he hadn’t been watching Loki like a cornered predator he would have missed the flicker of utter betrayal that raced over his face before he quickly turned it into half a smile. “It was the right thing for him to do. I would have just weighed him down.”

“Hey, I’m sure he was coming back for you.” He spoke softly, ignoring the part of his mind screaming at him to stop sympathising with the devil. 

Loki smiled at him and nodded. “I’m sure.” He suddenly started breathing faster, his hands clenching into fists. The green magic swirled out of his chest and he tipped his head back against the rock, clenching his jaw, trying to suppress moans of pain. 

Tony sat forward without thinking and rubbed his shoulder, startling him so that his eyes snapped open. “You’re OK, Lokes, it’ll pass in a moment.” He held the green gaze, murmuring comfort, and Loki stared back as he brought his breathing under control. When the light disappeared he slumped against Tony’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, I’ll move in a moment…”

“Don’t worry, Sandman, take as long as you want.” He carried on rubbing Loki’s shoulder, and when he tried to lift himself back, he lowered his body to the ground instead. “Probably best if you rest for a while.” He held the helmet to his ear. “Hey, JARVIS, how’s Loki looking?”

“His wound has decreased in size a further 7.2%,” replied the AI, and Loki startled to hear the voice coming from the helmet on the floor.

“Huh, that’s more than any of the other healing events, isn’t it? What are the possible variables? Consciousness?” He looked at Loki’s wide eyes. “It’s my AI, JARVIS. He’s like a computer programme…”

“I know what artificial intelligence is, Stark,” he said, relaxing.

Tony shrugged. “Your brother didn’t.”

“He’s not my brother, and he’s an idiot.”

“Yeah, he definitely fits the whole jock stereotype. You’re so obviously adopted.”

That flash of betrayal flickered across Loki’s face, staying for longer this time, and he turned his face to the wall. Tony felt a stab of guilt. “Uh, sorry, sore topic?”

Loki laughed bitterly. “He told you, then. Only Thor would insist on calling me brother to my face, and monster in front of his friends.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t call you a monster. He was generally on your side. Well, at the start, anyway. And apart from throwing you out the plane. Actually, yeah, he kinda wasn’t on your side at all, was he?” Loki huffed a laugh, which turned into a pained cough, and Tony leaned over him. “Let me take a look at it. I might be able to do something. At least JARVIS can see if you’re getting infected or anything. How the hell do you undo these buckles, Jeez!”

“Usually by magic,” he groaned. “But there are working buckles under my left arm.”

Tony nodded and lifted his arm, finding a row of flat metal buckles recessed into the leather and flicked them up and open one by one until the chest plate could be lifted up and away. “Woah, dude.” He sat back on his heels and looked at the blood soaked undershirt. The soft linen had probably been green at one point, but it was black and slick with blood, sand, and possibly bits of bone. “Uh, got a knife on you?”

“Always,” Loki replied, shaking one out of his sleeve.

“Huh. Remind me not to grab you anywhere.”

“They’re kept in scabbards but yes, I would rather you did not just grab me.”

Tony grinned and sliced the knife through the shirt. The material parted with barely a touch. “Jeez, what do you sharpen these things with?”

“Magic,” he said.

Tony would have rolled his eyes at Loki’s dry tone but he was too busy staring at the catastrophic mess that was the god’s chest. “What the hell even happened to you?”

Loki very determinedly did not look at his chest. “I stabbed a Kursed elf, and he impaled me on the same sword.”

“Fuck.”

“I thought almost exactly the same thing when it happened.”

“Sir, if I may?” JARVIS called, his voice tinny from the discarded helmet. Tony put the helmet over his head, thankful to have his face hidden. 

“What are we dealing with JARV?”

“Master Odinson’s lungs appear to have mostly healed. He has still got three broken ribs, front and back, his sternum, while in the process of healing, is still badly shattered, and the pericardium is inflamed, though not damaged. Judging by the scar tissue I can detect with the scanners, it was pierced.”

Tony popped the face plate up to look at Loki. “How did you survive this?”

“I assure you, I didn’t expect to.”

Tony didn’t know what to say to that. “What about infection, J?”

“The area around the wound is inflamed and running at a higher temperature than the rest of his body. I would say there is an 85.9% chance of infection. I have little information on the Aesir, my assumptions are based on what scans I could take of the elder Master Odinson.”  
 “I am not Aesir, computer,” said Loki, “and I am not an Odinson.”

“My apologies. Would you please inform me of your preferred name and species?”

Loki turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “My name is only Loki, and I am a Frost Giant, a Jotun. I thought Thor told you?”

“He just told us you were adopted. What’s a Jotun?”

Loki closed his eyes briefly. “The greatest enemies of Asgard, and of Midgard. They invaded your world a thousand years ago, and the All Father led his army to push them back to Jotunheim.” He pushed himself up into a sitting position and raised his chin to look at Tony. “Please do not feel obliged to continue to help me. I understand you did not know what kind of monster you were aiding.”

Tony stared at him, open mouthed. “Why the hell do you think I’d hold a grudge against a species that invaded us a thousand years ago? You invaded us just over two years ago and I’m still helping you.” Loki looked away, confusion and embarrassment warring across his face. “What the hell kind of bullshit do they teach you in Godland anyway? You know, there are people who blame all Muslims for the Twin Towers attacks, and you know what we call them? Bigots. Have you really been taught for a thousand years that all Jotuns are monsters because they fought a war with you once?” When Loki still didn’t reply, Tony threw up his hands and slapped the face plate down. “Fucking gods. Fucking magic. Fucking UGH.” He glared at Loki. Then had to stop because he looked like a kicked puppy, which was just all shades of wrong on a super villain. “I’m going to scan for water. We need to clean that cut up or you’re going to get all sorts of infections.”

As he stood up Loki grabbed his wrist. He looked down at his hand, and Loki let go quickly. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I did not mean to—“

“I’ll be back, Princess,” he said more gently. “Lie down again. You don’t want to be sitting up when the magic hits, do you?” He helped Loki lie back again, pillowing his head on the leather chest plate thing, then stood up to leave the cavern.

“Thank you, Stark,” Loki whispered. Tony quirked a lip up in a half smile, patted Loki’s arm and left.


	3. London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony finds a portal back to Earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is shaping up to be THE ANGSTIEST thing I've ever written, and that's saying a LOT! There will be a lot of crying in this fic, I personally think the characters are justified though ;) Also a lot of swearing. Sorry (not sorry...)

Tony put his helmet on and flipped to the infrared night vision setting as he walked through the dark cave. He turned some music on as well. Just because he was feeling a bit of nostalgia. Not because he was creeped out about being in a fucking cave, not at all. He busied himself talking to JARVIS about the rock strata and the chemical composition, and picking up samples, until he spotted, of all things, a running shoe.

“JARVIS, is that a Nike?”

“I believe it’s a Lonsdale, sir.”

“Huh.”

“Sir, I—“

As he walked towards the shoe, the helmet sparked and died. Tony ripped it off and looked around him, his breathing quick. He was _fucking home._

His first instinct was to run as far as he could possibly go, away from this stupid portal, away from London, add it onto his list of places to _never fucking go again_ along with Afghanistan. And New York. And Malibu. Then he remembered Loki. “Fuck,” he growled. There was a tiny part of him…OK, maybe a little bigger than _that,_ which told him to cut his losses, just leave the guy. He was already healing. 

He turned and raced back through the portal, back the way he’d come. He couldn’t leave his suit, after all. Couldn’t let aliens get their hands on that piece of art.

“Wake the fuck up, get up, c’mon, get up, we’re getting out of here. Quickly!”

Loki twitched, his eyes going from asleep to wide and terrified and dangerous in an instant, but Tony didn’t have time for that shit. He pressed the manual suitcase button on his suit, the helmet still out of commission, and hefted it. Loki was staggering to his feet and Tony led the way down the tunnel. He turned to look and saw the god’s knees give out a few paces behind him.

“Fuck,” he sighed, and turned back to haul him up. 

“Do _not_ pity me, I do not need your help.” He pushed himself back up and Tony shook his head, racing ahead again. He didn’t want this portal to close just like the other had, and if the convergence Loki had mentioned was over, they were cutting it fine. This one must have just been a biggie.

He was panting by the time he saw the sneaker again. Loki was marching after him. The dude didn’t look like he had a stab wound festering in his chest. Sure, he didn’t look good, with the greyish tinge back in his skin and his eyes sunken and slightly flat, but he was walking without any hint that he was so severely injured. He looked like he had stalking up to him in his tower, and it sent a shiver down Tony’s spine. For a moment he wondered if the injury had been some sort of elaborate illusion, but there was the slashed undershirt, blood soaking onto the arm he held crooked casually against his chest. A flicker of thought wondered how much he could have been hiding under all that armour back in New York.

They both felt it when they passed through the portal, the quality of air changed. Slightly less iron, slightly more carbon particulates, and the walls became distinctly man-made. “Fuck…we made it. We fucking _made_ it.” Tony laughed breathily. “I thought we were stuck on that desert for good.”

“This is Midgard?”

“Yeah…yeah, think it’s London. Give it a minute and JARVIS will come back online, he’ll be able to—“

But there was a thump. Loki was slumping against a wall, shaking his head. “I…this is embarrassing.” His voice slurred slightly, and Tony helped to lower him to the ground.

“Hardly. You’ve still got holes in you.”

“I have had worse.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Loki’s eyes glittered ever so slightly as he flicked a look at Tony. “You should see the other guy.”

Tony stared at him for a moment, then doubled up laughing. “Seriously? You…who taught you that expression?”

Loki’s face shuttered and he pushed himself upright again. “If you will excuse me…”

“What? You…no, no, I will not excuse you. Where do you think you’re going like that?”

He rolled his eyes. “Calm yourself, Stark, I have no intention of invading your realm again. I simply plan to find some bolt-hole for a few hours to allow my magic to work, and I will be gone. You shall not hear of me again, I—“

“Not what I meant, Ichabod. You’re barely standing upright, the only thing keeping you conscious is willpower.” He rubbed his forehead. _I can’t believe I’m doing this._ “C’mon. I’ll get you fixed up. Then we can go from there.”

Loki stared at him. “Why? I have led an army of monsters against your land, destroyed your city, defenestrated you…why would you do anything but kill me? What is _wrong_ with you mortals that you forgive so bloody quickly?”

“I don’t…look, do you want help or not?”

Loki didn’t reply, and Tony was tempted to throw up his hands and say fuck it all, when he heard the laboured breathing and the slight thump as Loki fell back against the wall again. The green light glimmered from inside the wound and Loki breathed faster, then held his breath entirely, trying to stop the high pitched whine from getting out. Tony rushed over to him and supported him from falling right to the floor. When the episode passed Loki slumped, his legs unable to hold him up, his hands shaking.

“See,” asked Tony, making his voice a lot more flippant than it felt. “This is why I’m helping you. You fucking need it, OK?”

Loki shook his head. “You…you are…like nothing I…have…”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fucking unique. C’mon. The suit’s back online. Think your ego will cope with being carried? Don’t answer that, I’m carrying you.” Before Loki could respond he activated the suit and scooped him up in a bridal carry, shooting into the air and asking JARVIS to set co-ordinates for the Stark place in Oxfordshire.

***

It took less than an hour for Tony to fly to the Cotswolds from Greenwich, and he landed in the dark field outside the ironstone barn conversion. The house was dusty as hell, nobody had been in there for over a decade, and he hadn’t even installed JARVIS, but it did have a key code to enter the door, and JARV did have the code on file.

He lowered Loki onto a sofa on top of the dust covers and sought out the first aid kit in the nearest bathroom. The guy had blacked out some time over the M25, his eyes rolling back into his head, and Tony retracted the suit to hold the back of his hand against his forehead. He tried not to think about what he was really doing. Looking after the alien invader who’d thrown him out of a window? Ridiculous. Looking after a dude he’d found with a massive stab wound and hellish nightmares on an alien planet? No…still ridiculous. Oh well. He was committed to a course of action now, might as well just roll with it.

He squinted against the light as yet another wave of magic drove through his body, making the muscles tense up unconsciously. He noticed that Loki screamed with the pain if he was sleeping when it hit, but the stubborn bastard hardly made a sound if he was awake. He rubbed the back of the clenched fist vibrating on the couch and made hushing noises.

“JARVIS, what’s the news on that wound?” He put the helmet back on and allowed the HUD to scan Loki.

“Sir, it appears the wound has actually opened up a bit. His wound is now only 8.4% improved on our first sighting. The broken ribs are misaligned, but moving together, and his sternum actually appears more damaged than it was before.”

“Fuck.” Tony rubbed his face and scrunched his eyes shut. “Must have been that run for the portal.”

“I am sure Master Loki would prefer to be here with more damage, than in the cave with less.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Tony admitted, but it didn’t stop him from feeling slightly responsible. Which was stupid. Loki totally deserved this shit for New York. “Eh. Let’s bandage this guy up and go find something to eat. This is England, there’s gotta be a tin of baked beans round here somewhere. They don’t expire, do they?”

***

Tony found something better. An old takeout menu for the only Chinese place around that delivered out to the ass end of nowhere. He ordered enough food for the next three meals and stuffed a whole spring roll in his mouth the moment he’d waved the delivery guy off and kicked the door shut behind him. “Oh, god, this is amazing. Seriously, the grease, it’s like it was made for me.”

“I’m sure, sir.” The helmet was propped on the counter in the kitchen so Tony could chat to his BFF while cramming his mouth full without impediment. 

“Seriously, I’m gonna give you a corporeal form just so you can try this.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t.” JARVIS sounded horrified and Tony snorted. JARV enjoyed being anywhere and everywhere at once. He would have found a body of his own claustrophobic, to say the least.

“OK, how about chemoreceptors?”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s a priority, sir.”

“Snarky.”

He was loading egg fried rice onto a rice cracker when the screaming started, and he jumped, scattering grains across the marble counter. “Jeez. How many of those can a guy cope with?” He raced to the sitting room and crouched next to the squirming figure. “Hey, Lokes, calm down, buddy, I’m pretty sure those bone fragments know where they’re going and you're not helping matters.” He held his hand and rubbed fingers into his hair, and to his surprise he seemed to calm slightly. “There you go, that’s right, you’re doing great.” 

He would never have dared to talk like that to Loki while he was conscious. He’d probably eviscerate him for patronising him, hole in the chest or not. But with his eyes shut, practically sobbing in his sleep, the god seemed younger, and more innocent. He knew he shouldn’t let his eyes deceive him, but it was kinda hard to refuse comfort to a guy whose body was healing him in a deeply painful way, against his wishes.

Once Loki settled down again, and Tony’s own heart rate had returned to normal, he brought his dinner and the helmet into the sitting room and carried on his conversation with JARVIS sitting against the sofa so he didn’t have to move too far the next time. It was just laziness. That was all.


	4. Apologies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth starts to come out about the invasion

The night passed…slowly. Tony didn’t get much sleep, not that he’d been expecting it after the previous night in the cave. He’d drift off with his head tipped back on Loki’s sofa and wake up with a jolt a couple of hours later when Loki started screaming again. If it wasn’t the healing, it was the nightmares. At five am, pink light creeping through the windows, Tony found himself with an armful of sobbing, gangly god, begging for forgiveness. 

“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry, please…please…”

At first Tony thought he was talking about New York. Then he heard names he didn't recognise, and Loki calling for his father.

“Father, please, I beg you, I’ll be better this time…”

Loki curled his body around Tony as he sat on the side of the sofa, wrapped his arms around him, and sobbed, and Tony closed his eyes and wished he could be allowed to demonise the guy he’d thought of as a psychopath.

“I just need more time, I need to find them! I swear I will behave, I will do anything…I will make you proud, Father, please, let me search for him, Father…”

Tony didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but the anguish was breaking his heart slightly and he found himself holding him close and stroking his hair. “Hey, hey, it’s OK, we’ll go look for them when you’re better, all right? You just need to heal up, and then you can tell me all about it, and I…I’ll help you look for him, OK?”

He felt Loki wake up just then with a huge gasp like he’d been trapped under water, and he froze, worrying that the god’s pride would get the better of him. Instead, Loki retracted his arms from Tony and curled into himself. The sobs continued, but silently, shaking him with gasps. Tony hesitated, then stroked his shoulder rhythmically and ran his fingers through his hair. The sobs got harder, but Tony didn’t get killed, so he spoke softly. “Loki…hey, buddy, uncurl yourself, c’mere.” He propped Loki up into a semi-sitting position, tucked himself against the corner of the sofa, and pulled Loki between his knees and against his chest where he continued to shudder with grief, curled into deceptively little ball.

He woke up in the same position with a jolt. The sun was now blazing through the window, and Loki was still lying on him, his breath huffing softly against his chest. His t-shirt was still soaked with tears, and with blood lower down where Loki’s wound had bled through the gauze pad. They _really_ needed to get that cleaned and covered properly, but he hadn’t wanted to wake Loki properly to do it. He laid the back of his hand along his cheek. Didn’t seem to have a fever. “Time, JARVIS?” he whispered.

“It’s midday, sir. Master Loki hasn’t woken up since his nightmare at five am.”

“Huh, really? Awesome.” Less awesome was his need to pee. He didn’t want to risk moving and wake the god up. He probably needed all the sleep he could get. He smirked. He had it on good authority from one of his lab techs _that_ was like having a newborn child. He looked down at the black curly hair and brushed some of it out of Loki’s face. He could wait a little longer. “How’s his wound looking, J?”

“It seems like the lungs have repaired themselves almost entirely sir. I would estimate healing at about 40%.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “As much as all that? Huh.”

“Sir, if you don’t mind me saying, his most intense bouts of healing have been while in contact with you.”

“You had to make it weird, JARV.”

“Not at all, sir. Research in a number of studies has suggested that comfort and human contact improve healing rates and reduce pain.”

“He’s not exactly human.”

“Which might make the effects so much greater. His healing is already accelerated, due to his physiology and magic. Perhaps you are just speeding it up further, sir.”

Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I…I guess that’s a good thing.”

He felt movement on his chest. Loki's eyelashes fluttered, and he relaxed, rubbing his head against Tony’s chest…then froze. His eyes went wide, and he pushed himself fully upright, looking at Tony out of his peripheral vision as if he expected Tony to laugh or worse. 

“Mornin’,” said Tony, stretching and pretending everything was awesome, he always woke up with an enemy on his chest, thanks. “How’s the chest feeling?”

“You…you do not have to pretend, Stark.”

“Pretend what?” Tony frowned.

“I behaved reprehensibly last night.” He sat ramrod straight and looked ahead of him. “You have my apologies for—“

“Woah, woah, no, enough of that, Reindeer Games.” Tony sat up and rested his hand on Loki’s shoulder, telegraphing his movements. “You don’t have to excuse yourself for last night. New York, now, sure, I’ll take an apology for all that, but you haven’t done anything wrong in the last…what, thirty six hours? So chill out, you’re going to re-open that wound with all your stressing.”

“I do apologise.” Loki looked at him properly now, blue eyes intense.

“I said you didn’t have to, now—“

“For New York. I apologise for throwing you out of a tower, for opening a portal onto your world, and forcing you to fight the Chitauri.”

Tony stared at him, open mouthed. “You… _what?_ ”

At that moment Loki’s face crumpled and his hand went to his chest, covering the light pouring from the wound. Tony put aside the surreal idea of _Loki_ of all people apologising for trying to take over the planet and surged forwards to hold his shoulders. Loki held his breath, his face contorting in pain, but he stayed still under Tony’s support and made no sound until he gasped for air at the end.

“OK?” Tony pushed him back into the sofa gently and started peeling away the gauze pad.

“Why are you doing this, Stark?” He sounded exhausted again.

“I thought we established that? You need me to, that’s why.”

“I am almost certain that I could heal myself entirely while still lying in the dust of Svartalfheim.”

“Yeah, but it would suck, wouldn’t it?”

Loki chuckled, and Tony looked up in surprise before refocusing on the first aid.

“So. You apologise for New York, huh? Change of heart?”

“Change of circumstance,” he replied.

“And out of interest, what circumstances might make you try to invade again?”

Loki didn't reply for some time, his hands clenching into fists. Tony risked a look at him, saw his eyes staring into space. He was ready to give up on getting an answer when Loki started to speak. “I would say, to convince me to invade again, one would have to send me hurtling through the void for an indeterminate amount of time, introduce me to some…persuasive beings, and use the mind stone to underline your argument.”

“Huh,” Tony said. “Sounds like a very specific set of circumstances.”

“Indeed.”

“What’s the mind stone, just for future reference?”

“The gem in my sceptre.”

“Master Loki,” JARVIS interjected, “would you say that the mind stone has an effect on your amygdala?”

Loki frowned at the helmet. “I do not know what that is.”

“It’s an area of the brain associated with emotions and decision making, and the right lobe is particularly involved in fear and aggression, among other things. I detected a significant spike in this area of your brain scan while you were in the tower in New York, but there is no such trace now. There have been other spikes in this region during the many stressful situations you have been in since we found you in Svartalfheim, but nothing approaching what I have on record.”

Loki stared for a long time, and at last huffed a laugh. “In the last two years not a single one of the people I thought knew me the best has noticed anything suspicious in my behaviour. Yet you know me for less than a week, all told, and you have already worked it out.”

“You were being mind controlled like Clint, weren’t you?”

“No,” he sighed. “Not quite like the others. I had more autonomy. They knew that the effect of the mind gem on me would be temporary, so they had…other ways to ensure my co-operation.”

“They? You mean the Chitauri? I thought you were in charge of them?”

“I mean the Mad Titan and his lieutenant, the Other. The Chitauri are a mercenary race, I had not met them until the moment they arrived through the portal.” He grimaced. “Stark, I would rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind.”

Tony thought about it. “I do, actually. Consider it your apology to me. You want to make amends for New York, so this is…this is my price.” He kept Loki’s gaze, trying to tell himself he wasn’t being a complete ass.

Loki bowed his head. “You choose your penance well, Stark.”

“OK? Really, you’re…OK, great, but we need food first. And I need to pee.”

***

Tony was ready to start bombarding Loki with questions as soon as he sat on the sofa with a bowlful of cold chow mein, but watching Loki inhale his food gave him pause. “When was the last time you ate?”

Loki swallowed and looked embarrassed, sitting up straighter and not loading his fork up so it could barely fit into his mouth. “Well, I thought I was dying on Tuesday, so…a week, maybe?” He looked at Tony’s horrified face. “It was a busy week.”

“I’m getting more lemon chicken. And slow down more, you’ll make yourself sick.”

They were interrupted by another healing episode towards the end, which left Loki looking like he regretted that last spring roll. Tony moved the food onto the table and sat back down as Loki uncurled himself and took a steadying breath. “What do you wish to know?”

Tony counted on his fingers. “Trip through the void, persuasion, mind stone. How did you end up in the void.”

Loki closed his eyes. “I cannot convince you to ask for a limb instead, can I?”

“C’mon, it can’t be that bad.”

“I discovered I belong to a race of monsters, tried to destroy said monsters, and then decided it was about time for me to join my family.”

“See, was that so hard?” Loki snorted despite himself, and Tony shook his head. “But your dramatic delivery’s just bringing up more questions right now, and you know I’ll ask them. So you found out you were…what did you call it—“

“Jotun,” JARVIS interjected from the helmet on the table.

“Thank you, that. And they’re monstrous because they had some sort of war?”

“They are monstrous because they murder everything in their path and abandon children to die. They are monsters because they kill the innocent for no reason other than that they are there.”

“And you know this because…?”

Loki’s face hardened and he gritted his teeth, his eyes closing again. “You ask too much of me, Stark.”

“No, really, you can’t make these kinds of judgements about a…a _family_ , for Christ’s sake, let alone an entire species, a species which includes you."

“Yes,” snarled Loki. “A species that includes me. Does it not become clear now, what the Jotnar are capable of? What monsters they can be? You can see for yourself the prime example, a cruel trickster, a liar, a beast without honour who is unable to keep even those most precious in the world safe…and I am one the Jotnar decided was not worth keeping, too small, too pathetic.”

He was leaning towards Tony, one hand pressed on the sofa while the other jabbed madly at his own crushed sternum, his eyes wild and mad like they had been in New York, and Tony found himself leaning back from the onslaught. For a moment after his outburst there was no sound except Loki’s heaving breath.

“Sit back down, Loki,” he said, more gently than he thought he would be able to. “Those levels of self-loathing you’ve got, they need looking at, really. And that’s _me_ saying it.” He watched Loki settle back into the sofa, his hands shaking, struggling to get his emotions under control. There was so much grief lining his face for a moment, even with his eyes shut it was obvious, but Tony couldn’t figure out how you could be taught to hate a group of people that much that it actually _grieved_ you to learn you were one of them. Identity issues aside, it was one hell of a reaction. At last he cleared his throat. “So…you tried to destroy them?”

Loki’s voice was flat and dull when he replied. “Thor was banished, and my discovery of my true origins shocked Odin into his Odinsleep—“

Tony snorted. “Sorry. Bit pretentious, that’s all.”

Loki didn’t even roll his eyes or smirk or anything, he just carried on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “I found myself still in the succession. Frigga..." he paused and swallowed, his eyes shut for a moment. "Mother gave me the throne.”

Tony whistled. “This was after you found out about the Jotun thing? And she knew?”

He shrugged and continued. “I sent the destroyer after Thor’s friends when they disobeyed my direct orders. Then I lured the king of the Jotnar into Asgard and killed him in Odin’s name. I thought for one moment that I had made my…my _father_ proud, but Thor turned up and ruined it all as usual. So I turned the Bifrost on Jotunheim and tried to provoke Thor into killing me. If I could not make my adopted family proud I would at least wipe my foul species off the map. And when Thor would not do the job, and Odin looked upon me with disappointment again, I tried to take matters into my own hands and let go, falling into the void. It was supposed to be foolproof. Nobody survives the space between worlds.” He looked down at his own chest wryly. “Although, nobody should be able to survive being stabbed through the chest, and yet here I am.”

Tony let out a long breath, disgusted. “You know, I thought you were fucked up when you were trying to _invade_ a planet, turns out that was you being fucking _nice_. Just…you know what, never mind. I’m going to have to process this. Let’s move on. Next step, persuasion. How would someone persuade _you_ to do something you don't want to do?” Although having heard what Loki thought was an appropriate reaction to finding out he was adopted, he didn’t think it would take much convincing to get him to invade a world. Thor always said it was to spite him, that Earth was under his protection, and Loki wanted revenge for…well, apparently ‘ruining it all as usual’. He’d thought that was just Thor’s natural arrogance talking, but maybe he had something there. Loki did seem like the god of fucked up families.

Loki just started laughing. Cackling, mad laughter which must have hurt his chest like hell and made tears spring to his eyes. “How does one persuade me to invade the largest realm in Yggdrasil, which is under the protection of the most powerful being in the Nine Realms? How, you say?” He struggled to his feet and ripped his torn and filthy shirt off completely, turning his back to Tony. “This would be a good start.”

It was horrifying. The skin was a roiling mass of scars under the grime, some only half healed, and Tony had seen first hand how fast Loki could heal himself from a through-and-through to the chest. Around the exit wound which he hadn’t been able to access to bandage the day before there were lash marks, some fading to silver, while others still had raised edges and look like they’d torn deeply into the skin. There were thin lines that carved what looked like words in a different alphabet all over his shoulder blades and up his sides. Deep star-like puckers were either relatively shallow stab wounds or deep burns, and all down one bicep was the melted, bubbled effect of scalded skin. Tony held his hand over his mouth. If he didn’t he thought he might puke. “Who did this to you?”

Loki stood for a long moment, clenching and unclenching his fists on the shirt in his hand. Tony hardly noticed, he was cataloguing the plethora of horrors. Now the shock of the scarring had died down somewhat, he was able to see that some of it went further than just his back and his upper arms, wrapping around his torso and disappearing into his trousers, but mostly they seemed to have kept his front - his chest and face - untouched. And underneath it all, he was also painfully thin, his bones jutting out under the warped skin. Some of them had obviously been broken at one time. “ _How_ did they do this to you? You’re a fucking Norse god, how did someone hurt you this bad?”

“Must you demand instructions on how to destroy me?”

“What? No! That’s not what I meant, Loki, I’m not…not interrogating you here, I just…” but he had been interrogating him, a little bit. He’d wanted to know _why_ Loki would attack them like that, what could incentivise trying to take over a planet, but now a lot of other things were making sense. He shook his head. “C’mon. You need to be cleaned up. I’m not letting you heal up from that stab wound just to get some nasty ass infection from your old torture wounds.”

“They will heal in time, Stark.” He went to pull the torn and bloody shirt back on and Tony stopped him, walking around to look him in the eye. 

“Take it from me, buddy. Post-torture showers are literally the best thing in the world, closely followed by post-torture burgers.”

“I _have_ washed since Thanos’ realm, Stark.” But he didn’t resist, and Tony was able to pull him by the wrist towards one of the bathrooms.

“Thanos, huh? I’m making a mental note of that, and we will be returning to that subject. I need to get as much info on him as possible, because if that’s the guy that can take the skin off a person who survived a Hulk smash, we’re gonna need all the help we can get. But I’m not sure I believe you about the shower thing, anyway. Prison showers don’t count, I’m talking nice warm water and fancy soap with a fluffy towel at the end.”

Loki’s face fell again. “I was…someone convinced me to shower and…and rest, when I arrived.”

“Huh. Let me guess, Clint?” Loki didn’t look up, but Tony could see the guilt written in his slumped shoulders. “C’mon, String Bean, let’s get you in a shower. Uh…” He looked at the gaping wound on Loki’s chest. “On second thoughts, it better be a shallow bath for now. I don’t want to know how soap’s going to affect that thing.”

“I will be fine, Stark, just leave me.”

Tony squinted at him. “Yeah, I don’t think so. You’ll go all glowy and drown yourself, and that would just be a waste of effort.”

“Stark,” he said, and his eyes just looked exhausted. “I think it has been proven that death will not take me. If I believed that drowning would work, I would be actively trying it.”

And then he just turned away and began measuring the temperature of the water like he hadn’t just admitted to _still_ being suicidal, and Tony couldn’t think of anything to do but stand there and stare at the knobs of his bent spine sticking out of the ruined skin on his back.


	5. Nightmares All Round

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be careful Tony, you might find yourself _wanting_ Loki's company...

Loki started off by quietly insisting he could do everything himself, even washing his shoulders in a way that made that broken sternum crunch so Tony could _fucking hear it,_ which was the most disgusting thing he’d ever heard, bar nothing. He didn't even bother snapping at Tony when he tried to take the cloth away, just ignored him completely and carried on scraping grime off his pale skin, exposing more horrific torture scars, bones that jutted out too far, and yet still an impressive amount of muscle. Tony guessed Asgardian prison had a good exercise regime, even if it didn’t feed its prisoners well.

Then the cloth fell as the light built in his chest, and Loki curled up so his face almost touched the water. Tony leaned over and slipped one arm across him, slipping under Loki’s opposite armpit so he wasn't pressing on the wound, and caressing his back and neck with the other hand. Loki didn't scream, just made very quiet gasps as the bones under his skin moved, and flesh and muscle knitted together before Tony’s eyes. The only sign that it was still incredibly painful was when Loki’s hands scrabbled on his shirt and his sharp cheekbones dug into his bicep.

After it passed Loki stayed slumped over Tony’s arm, catching his breath, his head bowed and pressed into the crook of his elbow. Tony silently picked up the cloth and began sluicing his back, avoiding the jagged exit wound completely and gently passing over the raw edges of lash marks. When he started shaking, just a little, with silent sobs, Tony almost couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t reconcile the broken man clinging to his arm with the sassy, sarcastic, vicious bastard who’d bantered with him and _enjoyed_ it, then threw him out of a window for pushing too far.

They changed the water twice before Loki let Tony help him out of the tub, bandaged him up, and got him into some old pyjama pants and a soft t-shirt he found in the master bedroom wardrobe. Tony stripped the dust covers off the bed and decided he didn’t care about duvet covers and sheets nearly enough, just lowered Loki down onto the bare mattress and covered him with a warm blanket.

“So I know you’re an independent kinda guy, but you’re still doing that healing thing, and when you’re not getting your glow on you’re screaming with nightmares, so I’m sharing this bed and you can just suck it the fuck up, OK? Damned if I’m gonna have to run in every few minutes from another room.”

“You do not have to run in at all, Stark,” Loki replied, with absolutely no bite. His eyes were dull and drifting shut already. 

“Yeah, but you know I will anyway, so just…” he waved his hand at him dismissively. He was already asleep. Tony went to have his own shower, and it was fucking beautiful. Angels sang, seriously.

It felt strange to push back the covers on the old oak framed bed and lie next to the Norse god of mischief who’d invaded his planet, but if Tony stopped to think about it, which he tried not to, the really weird thing was that it didn’t feel strange _enough_. He dropped off to sleep almost straight away. Which was probably a good thing, because he was awake an hour later holding a writhing, screaming, sobbing Loki still to avoid any more damage to either of them. It was a cycle that repeated itself through the night, and by the next day, Tony was just desperately glad he’d had good practice in the skill of sleepless nights, particularly over the last couple of years. He crept out of bed at 8am and praised any god of coffee who’d take the worship that there was a jar of Douwe Egberts in the back of a cupboard in the kitchen. Sure, it was instant, but it was actual caffeine and he nearly cried with joy when the nectar ran down his throat. 

Loki slept for another two hours, so he got JARVIS to book the cleaners to come in and repair the mess they’d made of the sitting room, and get them both on a jet back to his current sort-of home in upstate New York. Malibu was gone, the tower belonged to Pepper and SI, and the old family place in LA had too many memories he’d rather not acknowledge. Lake Ontario was relatively new. Safe. Perfect sanctuary for a couple of broken creatures. Tony shook his head when JARVIS confirmed the flight times. “What am I doing, JARV? I can barely take care of myself, let alone a guy with all my issues multiplied.”

“It might do you some good too, sir,” the AI replied. “You might develop some coping mechanisms for your nightmares in helping him with his, for example.”

“Or I’ll make him worse.”

“He’s suicidal and apparently quite hard to kill. I’m not sure you could make him that much worse.”

“I could drive him to invade again.”

“I don’t think he wanted to do so in the first place, from what he was saying last night.”

“I might annoy him enough that he’d want to destroy my planet. You underestimate how irksome I can be to some people, JARV.”

“Oh, trust me, sir, I do not.”

“Ha. Screw you, JARVIS,” Tony grinned, and got up to search the kitchen cabinets for anything edible. Eventually he found a packet of stale crackers, hefted the helmet in one hand, and walked through to the living room to sit down on the sofa. “Is it weird that I’m actually a bit worried about him? I mean, I should be glad he’s out of action, and miserable is surely better than murderous, but…I dunno. I guess it’s just wrong to see someone so broken. Even if I was trying to break him a couple of years ago myself.”

“Be careful, sir,” said JARVIS affectionately. “Your secret might get out.”

“What secret’s that?”

“Tony Stark has a heart.”

He snorted. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want people to know about that.” He gave up on the crackers. He was pretty sure there were weevils in them, or else the sleep deprivation was starting to get to him.

***

Pushing the nuke was delicate, and the skin along Tony’s back squirmed as the suit bumped against the metal cylinder. He guided it in an exponential curve, shooting over Cap and Thor, aiming straight for his tower, and _straight_ up, past Tash and the tesseract, up that beam of blue light, through the wormhole and into dead silence. The call to Pepper failed. The repulsors died, with no oxygen for the reactions. He couldn’t breathe, his heart thundering in his chest, in his ears, behind his eyes, pressing outwards on the arc reactor, but there was still air in his suit. He just couldn’t move his muscles, frozen in terror at the sight of that…that _armada_ ahead of him. The nuke struck, but it wasn’t enough. The wormhole closed behind him and he was falling, falling into nothing, into nowhere, and all around him was endless space and poisonously beautiful stars and galaxies, and a giant on a floating rock leaning over him and—

“Stark! Stark, wake up!”

Tony curled into a ball, snatching bites of air with whimpering breaths, but it wasn't enough, it was never _enough_ , there was no air in space and he was lost, lost, he’d lost everything and everyone and he’d thrown a nuke at a spaceship with his own two hands but he hadn't been able to stop Pepper getting hurt and there was someone _singing_ to him, who would be—

Strong arms were wrapped around him, and he’d been gathered, still in his little foetal ball, against a warm body who rocked back and forth, stroking his hair and rubbing his arms, and singing in a language he couldn’t understand. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had done this for him. Pepper had tried to wake him from a nightmare once, before Extremis, but the suit had put an end to that. Were there memories of lullabies and cradles somewhere buried deep in his brain, or were they wishful thinking? Tony kept his eyes shut and listened to his breathing slow down and his heartbeat return to a dull thumping instead of a hummingbird’s wings. The panic drained from him, replaced by shame and exhaustion and he just wanted to keep his eyes shut forever and pretend that he wasn’t Tony Stark, he didn’t have to be strong, he could just allow these arms to stay around him forever and take warmth and comfort from them.

He opened his eyes and pushed himself up, scrubbing the tears off his cheeks. “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t know what happened there.”

“Is that so?” Loki dropped his hands into his lap and let Tony move away. “I think you have cared for me through enough nightmares to know that you understand completely what just happened.” He looked up at Tony through tangled hair.

“It was nothing,” grunted Tony, pushing himself off the sofa and pretending his hands didn't shake. “How’s your chest?”

Loki gave him one last narrow-eye’d look and pulled the shirt off. Tony helped him to undo the bandages and whistled. “That’s pretty impressive. How’s that bone?”

“It feels fine,” said Loki, dully, pressing against his sternum. 

“Scans indicate the bones have nearly repaired themselves, Master Loki. There are a number of muscles that are still torn, and the skin is still damaged, but internal injuries are almost non-existent.”

Loki nodded to the helmet on the table and pulled the shirt back on. Some of his torture wounds looked a little better as well, and Tony wondered if they’d heal up by themselves now he had more magic to spare.

“I must thank you for your hospitality, Stark,” said Loki, standing and bowing stiffly.

“No problem, any time - woah, wait, are you going somewhere?”

“You do not need to worry, I will not remain on Midgard. I have somewhere I can be on a couple of the other realms, but I am in your debt. I imagine I can repay that debt by leaving you and your realm alone.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, sure. I guess that makes sense.” Loki nodded and turned to go. 

He didn’t know why he did it really. Maybe it was the feel of strong arms rocking him, and soft singing pulling him out of the void, but he grabbed Loki’s hand as he stepped past. “Hey, or, you know, you could come back with me. You know, you’re still not completely healed, you could hole up by Lake Ontario and chill out, take a vacation, whatever it is Norse gods do when they’ve just been stabbed through the chest.”

Loki looked at him, a slight frown between his eyebrows. “You have already proven your exceptional kindness, Stark, you need not put yourself out further. I have enough magic to get me to Vanaheim.” His eyes softened. “I swear to you I will bring no more pain to your world. I have no intention of causing harm to any other, I just want to live in as much peace and quiet as an undeserving creature can muster.”

He squeezed Tony’s hand, and Tony let it slip, let Loki walk past. “OK,” he shrugged, not bothered at all. Really. “Well, anytime you need bandaging up, you know where to find me.” He smiled at him as golden green light engulfed him and he disappeared.


	6. Lake Ontario

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nearly three weeks after Loki disappeared from London, he turns up in Tony's sitting room in upstate New York

“You know what my problem is JARVIS?” Tony asked after Pepper had left in tears. Again.

“You haven’t slept more than five hours straight for two and a half weeks?”

Tony curled up one side of his mouth in a tired smile and leaned his forearm on the plate glass window while he stared out over the lake. The helicopter was out of sight. When he’d asked her to stay, she’d said they both knew it was a bad idea. Tony hadn't known any such thing. “I’m clingy. That’s the problem. I just try to hold onto people and they feel trapped. It’s an unattractive characteristic, JARV, I need to stop it. Put it on a memo, will you?” He tipped the last of the scotch down his throat and moved back into the room to fetch some more, bumping into a chair on the way. “Who put that there?” He started counting off on his fingers. “Mom always said I was constantly grasping at her skirts. Dad had to constantly kick me out of his work space. Rhodey puts up with me for reasons beyond my understanding - JARVIS, check his psych profile, there’s gotta be something wrong with him.” JARVIS made a little whirring sound. “Are you rolling your light sensors at me?”

“As if I would.”

“Well, tough. You can’t run off on me because you keep refusing that body I’m building for you.”

“There’s no need for threats, sir.”

“Uh-huh.” He put the glass down on the marble counter with a clunk. “Where was I? Oh, yeah, Obie got so fed up he tried to kill me. _That_ should’ve been a hint there was something wrong. Pepper…JARVIS, why are you making me list all these people? This is just mean.”

“My apologies, sir,” the computer said dryly.

“Has the mark XLIX finished fabricating yet?”

“You haven’t finished setting out the parameters for the fabrication, sir. You still need to complete the wiring to the prehensile attachment.”

“Really? Why didn’t I do that?”

“Because after Ms Potts left, you decided to get drunk and maudlin instead.”

“Huh. Yeah, that sounds like me.”

“Might I suggest some sleeping pills, sir?”

“No, you might not. I still _have_ the nightmares when I take those things, I just can’t wake up from them.” He poured another generous measure.

“I’m sure alcohol poisoning will be a much more effective sleep aid.”

“You never know.”

“I do, in fact, know. Would you like video evidence of previous experience, sir?”

“I would not.”

There was a sudden crack and a burst of green and gold light. Tony yelped and jumped backwards, spilling the scotch into the sink. “Shit! What the hell?”

Loki looked like shit. More shit than he had before. He stood swaying in the middle of the room, wearing the same t-shirt and jeans he’d had when he left the Cotswold house. His hand was pressed to a damp patch on the front of the black shirt, right where the wound had been. Tony frowned, quickly sobering up. That should have healed up by now.

“Lokes?”

The god was staring around with a vacant, confused frown, and sluggishly turned towards his voice. “I seem to have miscalculated,” he said, and collapsed.

Tony raced forwards and turned Loki onto his side in a vague approximation of the recovery position, trying to move the shirt up to look at what was causing the bleeding. “Shit, JARVIS, scans.”

“It appears that Master Loki has contracted some sort of infection. The wound has not healed any more than it had in Oxfordshire, and he is running a fever of five degrees above his apparent baseline levels.”

“Shit, do we give him a shot of antibiotics or not, J? I don’t even know what penicillin would do to him, what if he’s allergic?”

Loki started to shift before JARVIS could reply, and rubbed his eyes. “By the Norns, my head hurts.”

“What happened, Lokes? You were healing up so well.”

He pushed himself up to sit against the cabinets, flinching and rearranging himself so he didn’t put too much pressure on the exit wound. “I do not know. I arrived in Vanaheim well enough, although it drained my magic more than I expected. My healing episodes were weaker, and I must have come into contact with something that irritated the exposed flesh.” He looked sheepish. “I know I was not exactly invited back into your home, but I thought that the environment in the house…well,” he looked around, frowning, “the _other_ house, might be conducive to healing. I had intended to stay only a short while, I promise, and I did not expect you to be there…Stark, where _are_ we?”

“This is where I’m living most of the time. Upstate New York.”

He frowned. “I must have traced you, rather than your other house, when I teleported here. I apologise, I will be out of your way as soon as my magic recovers enough—“

“Oh, no you don’t. You’ve got some sort of nasty alien infection, you’re getting in the bath and we’re putting some antiseptic cream or some shit on you before you undo all my good work. What did I tell you about coming back if you needed bandages? Why the hell did you leave it so late?” He helped the god up and pulled his arm around his shoulder to drag him off to the bathroom. He lowered him down onto a tiled seat and helped to strip him off as he shivered, his cheeks fever flushed. 

“I am not a child,” he said, but it would have been more convincing if he’d had any strength behind the comment.

“Neither am I,” he replied. “Pretty sure I’ve been thrown into a shower by other people more as an an adult than as a child, though, so that doesn’t say anything.” He stepped back as Loki stood and stripped his trousers off, completely unconcerned with being buck-ass naked in front of someone else. Vikings.

“You need to shower more often, Lokes,” he muttered as filthy water ran down the drain, exposing those horrific scars. There really didn’t seem to have been any change in their state. “What were you doing to get this dirty on Vanaheim?”

“I was attempting to grow vegetables.”

Tony stopped rubbing shampoo into Loki’s hair, which was harder than it looked, the guy was a giant. “You’re fucking with me.”

“Why would I joke about vegetables?”

“So many reasons, Reindeer Games, so many reasons. Why were you growing vegetables?”

“To _eat,_ Stark, what else do you do with vegetables?”

Tony suppressed a snort. It didn’t work and he ended up spluttering and leaning his head on Loki’s back as he giggled like a teenager. 

“ _What?_ What is so funny about vegetables?”

He shook his head and tried to get himself back under control, but the euphoria or hysteria or whatever had been swirling around his bloodstream since Loki had come back to distract him from his own problems, kept bursting out of him until he was holding himself up on the shower wall and laughing so hard tears were pouring down his face. 

“Stark…are you quite well?”

He shook his head and rubbed his face. He had no idea what he was laughing about any more. The childish vegetable images had gone but he was caught up in this weird cycle of giggling or crying or _something_. The water stopped and Loki was moving around, finding dressing gowns, and he was vaguely aware that he should be doing something to help, because Loki was ill and he was supposed to be looking after him.

“Stark.” Warm arms wrapped around him, and suddenly he was sobbing properly, gulping for air and shaking against Loki’s chest as he draped a warm, towelling dressing gown over his wet clothes and rocked him, rubbing his hair tenderly through the material.

At last he calmed down enough to notice Loki’s tremors. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, Loki, c’mon. Let’s get you sitting down. Fuck, I’m so bad at this.”

“You are not bad at this,” he said softly, but he flopped down harder than normal when Tony finally got him to the bedroom.

“Shit, look at you, and I was having some fucking moment, god, I’m such an ass.” Tony shook the dressing gown off and stripped his wet shirt off, flicking it in the general direction of the laundry basket while he hunted for the first aid kit. “J, where’s the antibiotic stuff?”

“Third shelf, sir, on the far left.”

“Thanks, _dear_.” he grabbed the box and returned to find Loki curled up under the covers already. “C’mon, kiddo, let’s get that wound wrapped.” 

Loki groaned and pushed him away as he rolled him over and pulled at the dressing gown. “Sigyn, leave me,” he muttered, and Tony snorted, shaking his head.

The wound was an angry red around the edges, and though it wasn’t down to the bone any more, it was still deep. The worst bit was the yellow patches along the ragged edges, and Tony scrunched up his face. 

“Sir, it would be advisable to clean the wound properly before wrapping it.”

“Yeah, antibacterial cream ain’t gonna cut it here.” JARVIS guided him in the direction of some hydrogen peroxide and a pack of cotton wool, and he settled back down beside the god, shaking his shoulder. “Loki, you need to wake up now because if you wake up while I’m cleaning this out you’re just gonna freak. Loki. Loki! Wake up. Ah, jeez.” He smacked his cheek, and eventually Loki’s eyes fluttered open, red rimmed and glassy. “There you are. Sorry about this, you need to be prepared for it, it’s gonna hurt some.”

Loki nodded and watched Tony pour the liquid out on the cotton ball. His breath caught as Tony dabbed it on the wound, and his face crinkled up slightly, but apart from that he didn’t react, even when Tony had to rub slightly to clear out the worst of the yellow sludge. He taped a sterile gauze onto his chest, coated with antibacterial cream, and patted him slightly to get him to roll over. The exit wound was even worse, probably because Loki hadn’t been able to see it, or reach it, and because backs are just generally less well protected. When he was done, he could _see_ the tension leave Loki’s back muscles. It was really the only indication of how much he’d been hurting.

“Do you know if you can take antibiotics, Lokes?”

“I do not think mortal medicines would have much of an effect on my metabolism,” he murmured.

“Yeah, didn’t think so.” Tony shrugged. “That’s the best I can do then, I guess. Just have to see how we go.” He picked up the plastic bag of disgusting cotton balls and stood to leave him in peace. A hand grabbed his wrist, and Tony had a memory of the cave on Svartle…Soharta…Planet Osiris.

“Stark…will you…” Loki wouldn’t meet his eyes, and Tony smiled.

“Sure, Reindeer Games. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Loki was still just awake when he got back, but his eyelids were fluttering, and when Tony slipped under the covers behind him, he let out a long sigh and his shoulders slumped. Tony caught himself smiling again.

“What’s going on here, JARVIS?”

“You’re helping someone who needs it, sir.”

“Talk about the blind leading the blind.”

If JARVIS had anything to say about that, Tony missed it.

***

Same shit, different night, Tony thought, as he fell through the wormhole again. Thing was, even though his nightmares were beginning to get repetitive and predictable, he couldn’t seem to stop being fucking terrified by them. His breath was still stolen away by the shock of the whole universe spread out before him and an unbeatable foe he’d probably just managed to piss off. He still couldn't bear to see it, and closed his eyes, wishing for oblivion rather than to have to deal with something so impossible. His heart still thundered against the arc reactor as the air whistled past his armour as he fell.

Then suddenly, the black turned to white. Endless blue-white fields of ice and snow, and in the centre, red, and two little children. His whole soul _ached_ with grief, but he couldn’t get closer, couldn’t see who they were, or if they were even dead. Maybe they were just…sleeping. 

Tony staggered back, and almost tripped over something on the floor. It was a man, broad shouldered and blonde, but it was hard to tell what he looked like because of the amount of blood. Someone was screaming like their world had been torn in two, the man and the children staggered to their feet, still bloody and twisted, disappointment and accusation in their dead eyes. Tony took a step forwards - _why_ , hadn’t he watched enough zombie movies to know what not to do? But he reached out a hand anyway. It was blue.

The screams woke him up with a snap and he turned to see Loki thrashing about and sobbing, the covers caught around his legs, blood seeping through the bandages. “Hey,” he yelled, blinking back sleep to grab for Loki’s wrists, folding his arms over his chest and wrapping him close.

“Narfi, forgive me,” he sobbed, his hands tangling into Tony’s pyjama shirt. “Vali, my baby, my baby, I’m so sorry.”

Tony slipped one leg behind Loki’s back, drawing him closer so he was practically on his lap, and rocked him. Loki curled up tight and shuddered with heartbreak, barely able to gasp enough air to repeat the same three names over and over. Tony pulled the dressing gown around his legs and smoothed it down, stroked his hair, rubbed his cheekbones and squeezed his hands, anything to try to comfort him. 

Of course, the magic healing hit just then as well, and Loki made a strangled noise as he pressed his hands against his chest. “It’ll be over soon, Lokes, you know it’ll help, it’s OK,” he soothed, still rocking. Remembering what Loki had done for him when he’d last woken up in this state, he sang random snippets of anything he could think of with a slow tempo, his voice scratchy and out of tune, but it seemed to be doing the trick.

When Loki finally slumped and slowed his breathing, Tony checked his temperature with the back of his hand. “Hey, looks like your fever broke.” He felt the man nod against his arm. “So…I’m guessing we shared nightmares at some point there.”

Loki froze, and sat up, horror in his eyes. “What did you see?” he demanded.

“Woah, chill out, it’s OK.”

“It is not OK. It can never _be_ OK. What did you see, Stark?”

“The man and the two little kids, in the snow.” Loki shut his eyes, looking like he was in more pain now than when the magic had been tearing through him. “What happened to them?”

The tears this time were different. Tony watched them pour out of him through Loki’s attempts to keep his face still and unaffected. His lips trembled with the effort of holding back the screams and sobs he’d been unable to control in sleep. “It matters not. They are gone.”

He hesitated. “It matters, Loki. They still matter. Tell me about them. What were their names?”

The breath Loki sucked in was shuddering, and when he spoke his voice cracked. “Sigyn, Vali and Narfi.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Stark…”

“No, Loki, it’s OK.” Tony wasn’t sure he’d ever spoken so gently to anyone in his life. “They’re important to you, they always will be. Tell me about them.”

He couldn’t for some time. He cried for ages, slumped back in Tony’s arms, holding on to him like he could save him from drowning.

“Sigyn was my…my husband,” he said, when he could speak again.

“There you go, that’s awesome,” Tony smiled, rubbing his shoulder. “Gay marriage, huh? Good for Asgard.”

“No, you do not…it is not acceptable in Asgard. I was…I had to be a woman to be with him.” He looked up at Tony tentatively, as if expecting him to react with disgust and kick him out or something. Tony just sighed and rocked him again.

“Sounds like a hell of a story.” Loki hesitated, then nodded, his face hidden on Tony’s shoulder again. “C’mon, I’ll make eggs on toast and you can tell me everything, OK?”

***

“I met Sigyn just after I came of age, when I was just over seven hundred,” said Loki, mopping up the last of his egg yolk with the toast crust. “He was a century or so older than me…”

“Woah, wait, sorry, geeking out here. A century?”

Loki nodded. “It takes about thirty or forty years to age us the equivalent of one of yours.”

“And you’re how old now?”

“I am approaching my first millennium.”

Tony whistled. “I’m not the old guy any more, awesome. Jeez. So in my entire life you’ve aged from the equivalent of, like, twenty seven to twenty eight?”

Loki shrugged. “It’s probably an acceptable comparison, yes.”

“Sorry, carry on with your story.”

“Sigyn was one of Thor’s peers, but he was nothing like the men who usually caroused with Thor. He was kind, and gentle. He liked animals and nature, and I could convince him to take me on adventures and hunts which involved no actual killing of the animals we found, but…observation, of their behaviour, and manners. I adored him.” Tony smiled as Loki shook his head in self-deprecation. “But relations between two men were taboo, as they are on certain parts of Midgard. it is something that happens, but not openly, and anyone suspected of such behaviour would be ostracised entirely. For a prince to even consider such things…” Loki snorted.

Tony nodded, thinking about how his dad had reacted the first time he was caught with a boy, rather than a girl in his room. 

“I tried to stay away from him, but I suppose I am spoiled, and selfish. I could not stop watching him. Eventually I could bear it no longer. I am a natural shapeshifter, and being a woman was certainly no harder than being something like a fox. So I…started to spend time with him. And before I knew it, he was returning my affections.”

Tony rubbed his shoulder. Even without the dream he knew there was no way this could end any less than horribly. “So you got married?”

“We eloped.” He laughed. “I was prepared to give up everything for him. I _did_ give up everything. I told him my parents wanted me to marry an old lord in Alfheim, and he asked me to run away with him, as I knew he would. We married. We…I bore children.”

Loki stopped, fighting agains the obvious lump in his throat, and Tony kept rubbing his shoulder.

“I thought…after little Vali was born, after I had proven myself to be a loving mother and a caring wife, after he had loved me for so long, I…I thought he would accept me for who I really am. I showed him my true form and…and he was _disgusted_ with me. He took my children, he took my babies, and he ran, afraid of the shame, and my aberration, and how I might twist their minds and turn them into monsters like me, and he ran away from me. I…I tried to follow them, tried to find them, beg forgiveness. I swore to the Norns I would remain as a woman for the rest of our lives if I could only get them back, I swore I would never touch him again if he only brought my babies back to me but…” Loki’s breath caught again and he was gasping, sobbing, his face clutched in his hand. Tony slipped off the stool to stand and wrapped his arms around him, rubbing his back as he stuttered out the rest of the story. “I was too late. Somehow, for some reason, Sigyn took them to Jotunheim, perhaps he found a portal there without realising, and…” he gulped, and started shivering. Tony had the feeling that the only reason Loki was staying in one piece was because he was holding him together. “They brought back Sigyn’s body for burial. The…my babies…they couldn’t even find their…” He was hyperventilating and gasping and making strangled sounds, trying to force the words out. 

Tony pulled him off the bar stool before he fell, and they sank to the floor together to ride out the panic attack. He closed his eyes and tried to hold off the grief he felt just being _close_ to this much pain. Suddenly the attack on Jotunheim, his apparent overreaction when he’d found out about his birth family, made so much more sense. But finding out the answer to one thing just spat up a whole lot more questions, and he wasn’t sure how to ask them without tearing Loki apart again. These things that had happened before the industrial revolution were still destroying him, so he obviously hadn’t been able to deal with any of it. He stroked Loki’s hair as he lay mostly still, every now and then shuddering slightly with the aftershocks. “Does Thor know about this?”

Loki laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. “Thor was the one who told me they’d been…killed on Jotunheim. He…” he sat up and took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “He told me it was for the best. That my children were un…unnatural.” He swallowed, and for a moment Tony wondered if he was going to be sick. “I think he thought he was being comforting, telling me that everything could go back to _normal_ , there would be no shame, no-one would ever know. No-one ever acknowledged that my babies lived. No-one but my...but Frigga, and she is gone now too. Stark, I do not even know what I did for the five years that followed. I know I slept. I know that Odin and Thor made visits to my room every week to demand I resume my duties as a prince, even before they found Sigyn’s body. My fath…Odin wanted to punish me for bringing such shame on the family, wanted to tear my magic away. My mother…” he smiled softly. “My _queen_ told him she would poison him in his sleep if he so much as touched me.”

“She sounds like a fucking badass.”

“She was. And she understood my need to grieve them. While Thor could not understand why I was so attached to these…freaks of nature, Frigga would visit me in my worst moments and ask me to tell her about them. Narfi’s laugh. How Vali showed her ferocity within days of her birth in a way Narfi never had. How Narfi could pronounce Svartalfheim perfectly but did not hear the difference between three and tree.”

Tony’s chest burned with sorrow and fury to think of the arrogant thunder god acting so sad that his brother was having a temper tantrum. If he’d known how he demeaned Loki’s grief at _losing his children_ , perhaps they’d have taken a closer look at Loki’s motivations during the invasion. Instead they’d just assumed he was evil and sent the Hulk to hammer him into the floor.

Loki sighed and leaned his head against Tony’s shoulder. They were both sitting on the parquet floor, leaning against the cabinets side by side. “I have not spoken of them for a century. I believed it would be better to tuck them away in my mind, because I would never be able to bring them back. I cannot think why these nightmares are plaguing me now, and worse, spreading to you…I apologise. If I did not need your medical expertise I would leave, but—“

Tony laughed. “Medical expertise? I’m an engineer, I’ve been able to fix any machine thrown at me, but people…I don’t do people.”

Loki frowned. “You are the only person other than Frigga to hear my tale without telling me what I must do to drive them from my mind. How can you say you do not deal with people?”

“Maybe it’s a human thing. We try not to repress stuff. Well, we’re supposed to. I’m the king of repressing stuff. So, y’know, do what I say, not what I do.”

“What stuff are you repressing?”

“Eh. Nothing much.”

Loki sat up and looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, then snorted. That set Tony off, and they ended up giggling like teenage girls, heads leant back against the units.

Loki sobered up with a deep breath and gazed out of the window at the clouds scudding over the lake. “It was New York, was it not?”

“What was?”

“The cause of your nightmares.”

Tony rubbed the back of his head and cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

“As fine as I.”

“No, you’ve got a stab wound all the way through your body, I’m actually fine.”

“Between the stab wound and visions of my dead children, which do you think is more painful? Just because I cannot see the injuries I caused you does not mean they do not exist.”

Tony didn’t reply for a long time. “C’mon. Let’s change your dressings.”


	7. Guilt and Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony talks to Bruce about his problems

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the end credits scene of Iron Man III which kinda broke my heart.

Tony had always thought he would be terrible at taking care of another human being. There was a good reason he’d never wanted children. He’d never had a pet, and he’d allowed house plants to die. There was a cactus somewhere clinging to life, he was pretty sure, but it was a close thing, and said more about the cactus than him. So he didn’t understand why looking after the guy who’d thrown him out of a window was so easy to do. He was waking Loki from his sixth nightmare of the day when he realised he hadn’t had an alcoholic drink or wanted to drown himself in work for over forty eight hours. Loki was giving him a purpose. He was needed. 

But it was more than that. Loki was good company. He was quiet, but thoughtful, and he could cook like a pro. Tony would wake (from his own nightmares, usually) and leave him in bed. Loki always seemed to sleep better in the mornings for some reason. He’d go down to his lab, and be dragged out by the smell of stir fry, pilau or schnitzel for lunch, and there Loki’d be, standing behind the kitchen counter with shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a welcoming half-smile on his face when he saw Tony following his nose. He didn’t smile much, not properly, and his laugh would always take Tony by surprise. He began saving up stupid thoughts that he hoped would make Loki laugh, and told himself he was only doing it to be kind to a guy who was grieving, and recovering from torture, and still considered a war criminal. And then he’d think about all the casualties of the battle of New York, hundreds of families broken because his houseguest got coerced into invading, and he’d have to spend an extra hour working on suits to burn off some of the guilt. The moments when he caught himself noticing the particular shade of blue of Loki’s eyes, or the fact that his hair was insanely curly, which he’d never have pegged back in the invasion, or the fact that Loki’s face _maybe_ lifted when he walked into a room, he had to leave without a word and build in silence until a different type of guilt sent him back upstairs to help Loki change the dressings on his wounds.

The really dangerous thing about that was that as soon as Loki was well again, he’d be off, and he’d leave Tony swaying without anything but alcohol and metalwork to support him. Tony was supporting himself on a scaffolding of bandage changes and green glowing lights and holding a thousand year old being as he begged forgiveness in his sleep from his dead mother, husband and children.

Then one morning he took Loki’s bandages off his back and there was no swelling, no yellow pus to wipe away. The wounds had closed over to leave a red, raw scar, bulging and puffy and sensitive, but safe from infection. Tony felt the void opening up under his feet as he touched the edge of the old wound and knew Loki would be gone just like Pepper and the Avengers and Obie and everyone else he’d hoped would prop him up. He snorted at his own pathetic dependency issues.

“Stark? Is everything OK?”

“Yeah, fine. Better, I guess. This one’s pretty much healed up. Still sensitive and sore, I think you should probably stick around a little longer, don’t want to set you back because you tried to run before you could walk.”

Loki looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, but nodded. The chest wound was still an angry red and not quite healed over. Tony breathed a sigh of relief and felt guilty when Loki’s shoulders drooped. He probably wanted to be out of here.

“How’re you feeling anyway?”

“Better,” he said dully. 

“Sure, you sound the picture of health. What’s up?”

Loki looked up in surprise. “I…no, I am fine, you have been more than kind to me. I did not mean to insult your hospitality.”

“It’s nothing to do with my hospitality, Lokes,” he laughed. “I’m not gonna take offence at you feeling down. It’s the nightmares isn't it?”

Loki let out his breath and slumped. “I do not know why they plague me now. I have not dreamt of them for centuries, and yet every night not only Sigyn but my mother as well, they stand and…and _scream_ at me, but I cannot hear them. I feel as though they are calling for help, but…but I cannot get to them, I cannot…I was unable to help them in life, and now I cannot help them in death. I cannot even seem to go to them when it is all I want…” he cut himself off and looked at Tony with guilty eyes. “I do not mean to be so ungrateful. You have kept me alive, helped me more than I would ever have expected, and here I am wishing for death. I apologise.” He shook his head. “I have caused you nothing but pain and fear, but you help me. You give me every comfort I could not ever deserve, and this is how I repay you. Why, Stark? Why are you helping me?”

“Jeez, can you call me Tony already?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you disliked Stark.”

“I don’t, it’s just…it’s my dad’s name, you know? I’m not Stark, my dad was.”

Loki nodded. “I understand that well enough. Tony.”

Tony rolled his eyes and tried to smother the grin and the stupid warmth he felt at the god of mischief calling him by his name, like they were friends or some shit. “C’mon Princess, let’s get you some breakfast.”

***

“Sir, Dr Banner has arrived. He wants to know if he can come in.”

Tony dropped his soldering iron and raised his eyebrows. “Where’s Loki?”

“He’s in your room, sleeping.”

Tony thought about it. Loki usually slept for hours if he slept in the daytime. He felt his selfish little heart leap at the idea of getting to see his friend without panic-hiding his…uh…whatever Loki was. “Yeah. Yeah, you know what, of course he can! Will you let Loki know to stay out of the way if he wakes up?” 

“No, sir, I thought I might traumatise both of them with an impromptu meeting.”

Tony rolled his eyes, but couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he bounced up the stairs and threw the oak doors open. He wondered if this was how kids felt when they were waiting for a friend to come over. Bruce rolled up in his shitty little Fiesta and Tony jumped on his back the moment he was out of the door. “Brucey! Where have you been? I’ve missed you, Science Bro.” He pointed to the house. “To the lab, noble steed.”

Bruce laughed, that cute little shy thing he did when Tony was an idiot. He did it a lot. “Hey, Tony, how’re you doing?”

“Awesome, perfect, and even better now you’re here to do science with me.” He hopped down and led Bruce in. “You’re gonna stay for a couple of days, right? We can pull all nighters.” He could hide Loki that long. The guy could go invisible, right?

Bruce looked awkward and hunched up a little. “I can’t, Tony, I’m just up for a day trip on the way to a lecture in Cornell this evening.” He smiled. “SHIELD’s been helping me get a few quiet jobs, they say it’s recompense for New York, but I think Fury just really hates General Ross.”

“That's great, buddy,” Tony grinned, flicking the kettle on and rummaging in the cupboards for some nasty tea concoction that Bruce might like.

“So…”

That’s all it took to know Bruce hadn’t come of his own volition. Tony felt his euphoria wane just a little before he told himself he was being a child. Of course Pepper had asked Bruce to come by and check on him. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t have done so anyway.

“…how are you, Tony?”

He was listening just that little bit too hard to the answer for it to be a throwaway piece of small talk. Bruce was checking up on him. Part of him was indignant. He was a grown-ass man, he didn’t need people to check if he was OK and coddle him and remember his social security numb—oh, wait.

But the other part of him was touched that Bruce cared enough to ask. Or Pepper, or whoever had sent Bruce. Like, at least _one_ person, if not more, was asking after his wellbeing.

“I’m great, I’m peachy keen.” He turned his most dazzling smile on his friend and went back to steeping the gauze wrapped lawn-trimmings in hot water.

“Come on, Tony, you’ve hidden yourself away in this place—“

“Hey, I’m not hidden. I’m not hiding at all, you found me, didn’t you?”

“You’ve just nearly died again, and you blew up all your suits, and threatened a guy on national television…you can’t be _fine_ after all that. Have you even talked to anyone about it?”

“Pffft, I don’t need to talk about my feelings, Bruce, I need to get on with things. I’ve got an Iron Legion to build up again.”

“I thought you destroyed them to prove a point to Pepper.”

“U-huh, she got the point, she didn’t like it, and she left anyway. Not that I blame her, she tried, she really did, but…” he deflated and rubbed his head, leaning against the counter. “We both thought the suits were making me worse, that they were a distraction against moving on or something, but blowing them all up changed nothing. I still couldn’t sleep, still got those…anxiety attacks, or whatever. And then the arc reactor surgery got cancelled because they couldn’t rebuild my sternum, I just…I didn’t get any better, and Pepper knew she couldn’t help me.” He shrugged. “At least we fixed Extremis, though. I’d hate to think I’d ruined her life completely.”

Bruce frowned. “She didn’t tell me anything about…Extremis, is it? I just saw the video of the suits, and all the stuff that was on the news. What’s been going on, Tony?”

Tony stared at Bruce, his kind brown eyes all sad and puppy like, and he figured, what the hell? They say talking about things is supposed to help. He’d tried blowing stuff up, drinking himself into a coma and propping himself up on injured Norse Gods, and nothing got rid of the nightmares. Why _not_ try fluffy-type talking therapies? Bruce was a doctor, wasn’t he? 

“We create our own demons. Who said that? What does that even mean?”

“I don’t—“

“Doesn’t matter, I said it ‘cause he said it. So now he was famous and that’s basically been said by two well know guys. I don’t…uh…I’m gonna start again.” He frogmarched a bewildered Bruce to an armchair in the next room, then flopped down on his back on the sofa. “Let’s track this from the beginning.”

He told Bruce _everything_. He added in a few self deprecating jokes, made himself look funnier, more ridiculous, just because laughing was a weapon as well as a medicine. But he was honest about the fear, and the worry, and the guilt. He poured out his soul, all the anxiety and the shame for not being strong enough to cope with everything, for letting that glimpse of infinity get inside him and take up residence in his brain when everyone else seemed to be coping just fine.

And it felt _glorious_. It felt like this tightness around him where the air had been pressing against his skin without him even noticing, had started to rise away just because his friend wanted to know if he was OK, and he was actually willing to let Tony whine at him for freaking _ages_ without interrupting.

“Thank you, by the way,” he said at last. “For listening. Plus, something about just getting it off my chest and putting out there in the atmosphere, instead of holding this in…I mean, this is what gets people sick, you know? Wow, I had no idea you were such a good listener. To be able to share all my intimate thoughts and my experiences with someone, it just cuts the weight of it in half.” He thought about Loki and how he’d been able to smile, just a little, after telling him about Sigyn and the babies. “You know, it’s like a snake swallowing its own tail. Everything just comes full circle, and the fact that you’ve been able to help me process…”

That was when he turned his head and saw Bruce asleep. He cleared his throat. The air was pressing against him again. “Are you with me?”

Bruce jumped. “Sorry…I was, yeah. We were at, uh…”

“Were you actively napping?”

“I was…I…I drifted.”

“Where did I lose you?”

“Elevator in Switzerland.”

“So you heard none of it?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not that kind of doctor, I’m not a therapist. It’s not my training?”

“So?” Tony was pissed. Since when did you need _training_ to hear someone?

“I don’t have the—“

“What? The time?”

“—temperament.”

 _Then_ he felt like shit. Of course he shouldn’t be offloading all this shit on poor Bruce! Seriously, he was epic levels of selfishness. He’d been whining about his heart rate increasing a little, thinking he was having some heart attack, like a little hypochondriac bitch? Bruce had _real_ issues with his heart rate. The guy turned into a giant rage monster when his heart beat a bit fast, of fucking course he didn’t want to hear Tony’s stupid poor little rich kid moaning. 

He panicked for half a second, then realised he had the perfect cover. He was Tony Stark. He was the poor little rich kid. He could make this into a funny anecdote, Bruce could go back to Pepper and tell her how Tony was fine, he’s telling stupid stories about himself, he’s no different to how he’s ever been…you know, he’s just being Tony.

“You know what, now that I think about it, oh! God, my original wound. 1983, all right?”

“Yes…” 

He glanced over at Bruce. He was falling asleep again. It was probably good for him, he was totally doing the guy a favour telling him stupid made-up stories from his childhood. “I’m fourteen years old. I still have a nanny - that was weird.”

He talked for another half hour, watching Bruce sleep as he made up a wild story in which his imaginary nanny had built a spaceship and taken him on trips around the galaxy in which aliens threw themselves at him just as much as Earthlings.

He left Bruce sleeping, just like he did with Loki, and wandered down to the lab to work on the next suit. He had a lot of catching up to do after Pepper’s Christmas present. He pretended the dull ache in his chest was from a muscle spasm against the arc reactor housing, or something slightly in the wrong place from lying on the couch for so long. And when Bruce staggered down, following JARVIS’ instructions, to apologise for falling asleep on him, he made a joke about Bruce having sex dreams with him in them instead of accepting, and waved him off with best wishes for the lecture. Then he went back to the lab and turned the music on loud, drowning his shame in AC/DC and calculations of torque and G force.

He smelled the food before Loki arrived, walking in a wide circle, keeping his distance until he could come within Tony’s eyesight, not approaching until he was out of his blind spot. “I thought you might be hungry. Or would you prefer not to be bothered?”

“Hey,” he said, signalling to JARVIS to lower the volume. “You didn’t have to bring it down or anything.”

Loki shrugged. “I thought you were more likely to eat it if you could smell it.”

“You’re right there.” He picked up his fork and used it to cut off some of the omelette and shove a huge piece in his mouth. “This is amazing, thanks.”

Loki nodded. “Would you like me to leave or stay?”

“What?” he frowned. “Uh, stay, of course, if you want to, you know. I don’t mind. Why?”

He looked shifty. “I must admit to having overheard some of your conversation with Dr Banner—“

“What?” he snapped.

Loki closed his eyes for a moment. “I had no intention of eavesdropping, Tony. I woke up and walked towards the living area before I heard your voice and registered JARVIS' warnings. As soon as I saw Dr Banner I returned to the bedroom. I…I tried to focus on something else, but I did not wish to make any noise that might alert the doctor or his alter ego to my presence.” He snorted. “I may have a death wish, but if I am forced to live I would rather do so unscathed.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Only enough to know you were discussing that which plagues you.” He glanced at Tony from under the curtain of black curls. “I am glad you have found someone you can trust with your tale, Tony. You have given me much comfort, but one of your kindest acts has been to listen to my past without judgement. You may have many people in which to confide, but I have not spoken of my children to anyone but you and my mother, and she is now with them.”

“I don’t,” he grunted, suddenly irrationally angry. “I can’t.”

“You…?”

“I don’t have anyone to confide in. I can’t confide in Bruce because he fell asleep. My story is stupid, Loki, it’s not…look, anyone with a shred of decency would be willing to hear about your kids, because that’s fucking horrible, nobody should have to go through something like that. But me? I’m just a spoiled rich kid, nobody needs to hear my stupid non-problems. I’m just a spoiled brat who can’t control himself in literally any way you care to think of, so no, I don’t have many people in whom to confide, thank you.”

Loki stared at him, his fork halfway to his mouth. “He fell asleep?”

Tony rolled his eyes and turned back to his work, leaving the omelette half eaten on the plate. “I don’t blame him, I was rambling. I’m glad he did, actually, it was stupid.”

“It is not stupid to want to be heard.”

All his anger and embarrassment and hurt bubbled out and he threw a screwdriver across the room. “You want to hear me? Fine.”

He told Loki everything. It wasn’t easier in the second telling. If anything it was worse. He left out the efforts at humour, tried to gloss over the pain and the panic and the fear of being lost out in space, of being all alone, knowing that if he couldn’t make Pepper stay he was doomed to being by himself forever because nobody could be as patient and loving as Pepper. He wasn’t lying on the sofa, relieved to be telling his friend everything that was bothering him, he was storming up and down his lab, yelling at the man who was partially responsible for his panic attacks and whom he couldn’t blame because he had been a broken puppet himself at the time. He threw out his story, ripping all the pieces from his chest and hurling them at the floor in front of Loki, waiting for him to roll his eyes and sigh in exasperation that Tony was being so dramatic and childish and stupid, to remind him that there were people in the world with real actual problems like murdered children and torture that actually left visible scars and a family that wasn’t a real family, but kidnappers from an enemy race.

And when he finished, snarling and breathing hard and refusing to let the angry tears fall, Loki stood and walked up to him, wordlessly, and wrapped his arms around him, and Tony sobbed into his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case it wasn't obvious, Tony is an unreliable narrator when it comes to his mental illness - if you get panic attacks you're not a little hypochondriac bitch, but as someone who _gets_ panic attacks, I often feel like that. Talking therapies really help, if you can find the right therapist, in a way that talking to your friends often can't because therapists and counsellors are trained to keep their own baggage out of the conversation, so essentially you don't have to worry about their feelings!
> 
> Please note I've just changed the rating, which will be relevant to the next chapter!


	8. The Things we Deserve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A move is finally made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...uh...remember how I changed the rating on this fic? It's not _very_ smutty or anything, but it's there so... (blushes and runs away)

Loki practically carried him to bed that night. He didn’t feel that nice lightness he had when he offloaded to the sleeping Bruce, he just felt empty and dehydrated and raw. Loki put his arm around his shoulder, and his other hand on his chest, and walked slowly with him up the stairs and into the room they’d been sharing for almost two weeks. He sniffed as Loki found his pyjamas and helped him change, like he was a little kid or someone with a stab wound through his chest, and he pulled the duvet up to his chin and curled his body around Tony when he’d changed himself. He slipped one arm under Tony’s neck and rubbed his bicep, and he fell asleep to the god of lies telling him everything would be OK.

When he flew in to Stark Tower and let the suit peel away from him, Loki was standing at the window as he had every other time. Only now he was barefoot, his long hair in messy curls down his back, a loose t-shirt and black trousers hanging on his too-thin frame. He turned to Tony as he came in, a small but real smile on one side of his face, then went back to looking out of the window at New York.

“You have rebuilt.”

“Yeah. We’re good like that. Sometimes. You gonna have that drink this time?”

“Please.” Loki followed him to the counter and passed him glasses from the cabinet, brushing his hair back with one hand. When Tony gave him a glass of scotch, he kissed the corner of Loki’s mouth and neither of them seemed to find that strange. Loki was reaching out to cup Tony’s cheek, so he didn’t see the wall collapse in a blast of rubble as the Hulk roared through and reached out for him.

Tony sat up shouting Loki’s name in horror. His heart was beating in panic, and he looked around the dark room, expecting to see Hulk beating the guy he was having inappropriate feelings for into the ground again. He’d seen the footage of Hulk’s last meeting with Loki and even when he hated the guy he’d winced. Now, when he thought back to that high pitched keen and the shocked wide eyes, he felt sick, not wanting to imagine that happening to someone he’d held and bathed and watched sleep in the early hours of the morning.

“Tony? What is it?” Loki was sitting next to him, rubbing his eyes and looking around. “What happened?”

He just let out a whoosh of breath and let himself sag into Loki’s shoulder. “Just a nightmare.”

“About New York.”

Tony nodded and Loki hugged him. “I am sorry, Tony.”

“What for?”

“I heard you shouting my name. It must have been something terrible.”

“Oh! Yeah, no it wasn’t _New York_ New York, it wasn’t your invasion.” He shuddered. “It was…you were _you_ , and Bruce was there, and we didn’t know it, and he hulked out and…”

“The Hulk would never harm you, you know that, do you not?”

“It wasn’t me, Loki…he grabbed you again and I…I woke up but I knew what was coming.”

Loki leaned back and looked at him in horror. “You were afraid for me?”

“Yeah…”

He stared at him for a moment, and Tony couldn’t figure out what he was thinking, his hand clenching into a fist on the sheet. Then he suddenly stood and walked out. Fuck.

“Loki?” Tony jumped out and followed him. He was pacing up and down, turning sharply and muttering at the floor. “Loki, what’s going on?”

“I…I have been selfish, I cannot stay, I have taken too much from you already and—“

“Woah, wait, stop, what’s going on? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought up the Hulk, that was probably really insensitive of me.”

Loki just barked a laugh and paced faster. “You were afraid for me. You cared about my wellbeing and I…” He stopped suddenly and buried both hands in his hair, curling over and groaning in frustration or fury or something. “I cannot let you care for me!”

Tony stared at him. “Well, it’s a bit fucking late for that, Lokes.”

Loki looked up in utter horror, like it hadn’t crossed his mind that looking after him and _being_ looked after by him wouldn't have a massive effect on Tony’s life. “You cannot! You must not…Tony, you cannot be concerned about me.”

“I’m _concerned_ about the postman when he trips on the fucking drive. I’m concerned about the guy I see down the beach who’s getting a sunburn. What I’m feeling for you stopped being concern when you walked through the portal into London like you were a fucking prince even though you were half dead!”

Loki was almost hyperventilating. Tony knew that look. He walked closer to him, wanting to wrap his arms around him and sit him down and make it better for him, but Loki staggered backwards. “You cannot, Tony, you must not—“

“Why?” he yelled.

“Because everyone who has ever cared for me has been killed, and I cannot let that happen to you too!”

There was silence while that sank in to Tony’s head. The dust motes in the moonlight stopped moving.

Loki had a snarl on his face, but his breathing was settling down to normal, and he slumped, leaning on the back of a bar stool. “I have brought nothing but death to those I’ve cared about. I cannot let that happen to you too.”

“Bullshit.”

Loki’s eyes snapped up and he glared at him. It was intimidating, sure, but it was _alive_ , and for a moment Tony saw the fighter he’d been in the invasion. Not just the warlord, but the tricky little shit trying to push back at the puppet master, aggravating the world’s greatest superheroes just enough that they’d come to fight him. He stepped forward. “You didn’t ‘just bring death’ to any of them, Loki - no, don’t interrupt!” He counted off on his fingers, moving closer. “You brought love to Sigyn, yeah, sure under false pretences, but I get the impression you were happily married, am I right? Of course I am. How long were you married? A hundred years?”

“Nearly two hundred…”

“There you go. Your mom,” he put up another finger. “You’re a thousand years old, or nearly. So I imagine in that time you’ve brought your mom a lot of things. Frustration, pride, exasperation, laughter? Love? For a thousand years. And then there’s your kids. I know they were little when they were taken from you, but in that little time they were alive, they had you as their mommy to sing lullabies and rock them when they had nightmares and tickle them and make them laugh. You do _not_ bring nothing but death.”

Loki sagged again and shook his head as Tony walked closer. “It does not matter, because at the end I brought their death to them. And now, I may not be able to die but I do not want to cause any more pain and death. I do not deserve happiness, but maybe, if I live well, I will deserve my own death.”

Tony stepped closer still. If he reached out his hand he would be able to wrap his fingers around Loki’s arm, feel the wiry muscles and ligaments under the soft, smooth skin. “You deserve happiness as much as I do.”

“You are a hero.”

“I’m the Merchant of Death,” he shrugged. “Anyway, who said happiness is about what you deserve? Look, maybe it’s a human thing, but life throws enough shit at us. We’ve got to take the good parts where we can find them.”

“And you would find good with me?” he snorted

He took another step into Loki’s space, lifted his hand to trail the backs of his fingers along his bare arm, and watched the goosebumps appear in their wake. “I have already found good with you. I’m kinda looking for more. I’m greedy like that.”

“I am not safe.” His voice had dropped almost to a whisper, like he was trying to convince himself as well as Tony.

“Me neither. I fly around fighting in a suit of armour. I carried a nuke into space. I’ve never been safe.” He slipped his fingers up Loki’s shoulder so they were skimming over the material of his t-shirt, and up to his neck, and his blood tingled with the little exhale Loki made. “Tell me to stop,” he said quietly.

“Tony…”

“If you want me to stop,” he said, stroking the soft, delicate skin from his collarbone up over his Adam’s apple and by his ear, “I’ll stop, and I’ll leave you alone. But if you think you can get some happiness - not eternal happiness, just some, just right now - then I’m going to keep going.” He ran his fingers into Loki’s black curls, hands on either side of his face, and Loki’s eyes fell shut, his lips parting. Tony could feel himself responding, and he let the sensations echo around his skin rather than denying them or pretending they didn’t exist, rather than running off to the lab to bury his confusion in mechanics. 

He moved the thumb of one hand to stroke across Loki’s lips, cupping his cheek and rubbing his high cheekbones. Loki leaned into the touch like he had when Tony had picked him up in the desert planet, and he wondered how long it had been since someone touched Loki because they wanted to. He took a step closer, and Loki put a hesitant hand on Tony’s hip. He took another step, and their bodies were touching. He could feel Loki’s breath catch with the contact, as Tony’s hips pressed into his erection, already straining through the soft pyjama pants. He pulled Loki’s face down slightly, moved up and brushed his lips across Loki’s.

It happened suddenly. Loki pressed forwards and wrapped his arms around his back, pulling him up, holding him tight against him, and kissed him hard, lifting him off his feet so he could wrap his legs around the narrow waist. Tony dug his fingers into his hair and pulled until Loki groaned, and kissed his jawline, down his neck, suddenly frantic and wanting to touch and taste all of him. The world faded and reappeared and Loki leaned forwards until they landed on the bed. 

“Did you just teleport me into my bedroom? Because you know that’s a sure fire way to get into my pants. No-one’s ever done it before, but I’ve just realised it’s the hottest thing ever.”

Loki huffed out a breathless laugh. “You had better take your pants off then.”

Tony pushed him up, stripping both of them with a cheeky grin. But then Loki was looking at him so seriously, touching his face with what looked like awe, and Tony’s smile faded, and he kissed him. Loki’s fingers ran up and down his cheeks, following the lines of his beard before sliding down his throat and along his ribs, avoiding the arc reactor even though he’d never told him it was sensitive. Loki pulled him onto the bed beside him and nipped his lower lip, kissed his neck, down to his nipples. Tony felt the urgency return, felt desperate to feel Loki inside him, and he scrabbled in the bedside drawer for lube, pushing it into Loki’s hand. 

“I want you to take me, Loki,” he said, wrapping his legs around Loki’s hips. “I’ve been thinking about you buried inside me for weeks.”

Loki stared at him, then growled slightly, which made Tony’s eyes flutter shut, and then surged forwards to kiss him hard. His cock was pressed against Loki’s stomach when the first finger pressed into him, and he gasped and clenched his fists around Loki’s long hair. Loki moved slightly, rubbing against his erection, and Tony groaned as Loki pushed further, pressing inside him, twisting and sliding, a second finger, and then a third stretching him just the perfect side of pleasure and pain.

Loki pulled his fingers out and rolled him so he was face down, then wrapped long fingers around his hips, pulling them up so he pressed against his entrance. Tony moaned and pressed back against him, drawing a gasp as he felt the head breach the stretched ring of muscle. Loki pushed in, inch by inch, then stopped when they were pressed together, both breathing heavily, before he began to move with long, smooth strokes that made stars dance before Tony’s eyes. 

With his chest brushing the bedclothes and Loki moving inside him, he felt like his skin had expanded and stretched to fuse with the universe, and he could feel everything. The rush of the fabric under his fingers and elbows, Loki’s lips leaving warm breath and soft kisses on his shoulder blades and down his neck, Loki’s hands stroking his ribs and back and stomach and legs, his arms wrapping around Tony as if he wanted to remind himself he was here. The brush of air as Loki whispered his name against the crook of his neck. Lying sweaty and tingling, limbs tangled together, Tony heard alarms going off under the bliss, saying it wasn’t _right_ to feel this much this soon, back off, put up walls, protect yourself. Then he opened his eyes to Loki smiling at him and stroking his cheek with the backs of his fingers, pressing their foreheads together, and he turned the alarms off and fell asleep in his arms.

The nuke against his armour made his skin crawl as he guided it carefully, recklessly, along the streets of New York and up the beam of blue Tesseract light. One moment he was passing leviathans and Chitauri foot soldiers going the other way, the next he was bursting through the portal into space. His heart stuttered when the whole universe opened out around him, the air already thin and poor as it was sucked out of the gaps in his armour. The call failed. He closed his eyes, too terrified to look on his failure any more, and he fell.

His eyes snapped open and he took deep, ragged gasps of air, trying to hold them in instead of hyperventilating and setting himself off on another panic attack. Then he felt the long, strong arms around him, a body pressed beside him, stroking his hair, rocking him. He closed his eyes and slumped against Loki’s chest. Loki pulled him down, back into bed, nestling Tony’s head against his shoulder and linking their legs together, rubbing his back. Tony waited, tense, for him to ask what the nightmare was about. Everyone always asked what the nightmares were about. _He_ always asked what the nightmares were about. But this time Loki just held him tight and said nothing, and as Tony relaxed and focused on the rhythm of Loki’s fingers on his ribs, he fell back to sleep again.


	9. Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little fluffyish interlude

Tony woke up again six hours later. For a long time he wondered if he was really awake, it had been so long since he’d woken up naturally, rather than hurled out of a bad dream. The sun was flickering through the breeze licked curtains, and he was still lying on Loki’s shoulder. His fingers were lazily tracing circles on his upper arm.

“Mornin’.”

“Good morning.” Loki’s voice was quiet and a little distant. Tony immediately wondered what he was thinking. Was he regretting last night? And if so, why? Tony wasn’t someone who liked to talk about his feelings, and he didn’t like not knowing where he stood, if it could be helped. So he thought for a moment, then rolled over so his chest was resting on Loki’s, and kissed him. 

The smile that bloomed under Tony’s lips and tongue was enough to reassure him that it hadn’t all been a huge mistake. Loki tilted his jaw and kissed him back, pulling him close so his arc reactor pressed against his chest. When Tony pulled back to check it wasn’t bruising Loki’s scar, he saw a circular imprint on his skin from the pressure, and kissed it. Then he moved on to kissing every other inch of him.

When they were curled up together and their breathing had evened out, Tony rubbed his nose into Loki’s neck. “We need a shower.”

He felt Loki’s smirk moving his hair. “But I do not want to move.”

“We’re sticky and gross.”

Loki’s hand appeared in his field of vision and he flexed his fingers once or twice, waiting for Tony to pay attention. Then he made a small gesture, and Tony’s skin tingled everywhere, suddenly completely clean. He looked down at himself, then leaned his chin on Loki’s collarbone. “I’ve always wondered if a Jedi would use the force for inappropriate reasons. Guess that answers that.”

“It is magic, Tony, not worship. There is no inappropriate use of magic, it’s a tool.”

“I have a lab full of tools. I can think of some really inappropriate things to do with them,” he leered, and Loki laughed. The deep chuckle vibrated his chest and made a buzz against Tony’s ribs. He decided he liked it. He wanted to feel Loki laughing more.

“What would your Avengers think?” Loki asked softly, staring off into space. His smile had gone, and that irritated Tony. He wanted that smile firmly on Loki’s face.

“They’re not my Avengers, and I don’t care.”

“Are you not still a team?”

Tony rolled slightly so that he was staring into the distance as well, his head pillowed on Loki’s shoulder. “I wanted us to be a team at first. We sort of are still part of the initiative, but nobody wanted to stick around and actually work together. And then I found out SHIELD had manipulated us together anyway - did you know Coulson’s still alive?”

“Coulson?”

“You stabbed him on the Helicarrier.”

“No,” said Loki. “I did not.” He turned his head to look down at Tony. “I am not a good person, Tony. I did not even attempt to appear merciful. He and the other soldiers that died in my attack I considered collateral damage, and…I am sorry but if put in the situation again, I would still do the same thing.”

Tony slipped his arm around Loki’s chest and snuggled closer. “I would hope that you’d know you could come to me for help instead.”

Loki shook his head. “I would stay as far away from you as possible. Back then, you were just another playing piece, someone who needed to be manipulated into fighting in the right place, with the right people, to have the best chance of winning.”

“You threw me out of a tower, how could I have won if I was a greasy smear on the pavement?” he grumbled, poking Loki in the ribs.

“I am sorry,” he said, tightening his arm around Tony, and pulling him close with the other. “I had such clear plans to take you into the mind control, it was essential, I thought. I knew if you could see my intentions you would be able to mobilise Midgard’s most effective weaponry. Thanos and the Other would believe you were planning to use it to turn on your governments, but at the right time, it would pass through the portal and destroy the entire Chitauri army, rather than just a few of the motherships.”

“Huh,” said Tony. “Can’t say I’m not personally glad to miss out on the mind rape, but yeah, that sounds like it could have worked. If one nuke could do that, then…”

Loki nodded. “When your arc reactor repelled the mind gem’s effects, I panicked. I was furious - I thought if you couldn’t fulfil the plans I had, that Midgard was doomed, and that Thanos would have a gateway to Asgard.” He smiled against Tony’s head again. “As ever, you pleasantly surprised me.” He kissed his hair. “I am sorry the experience has been so damaging, Tony. I would not have wanted that, but I still—“

“I know. You’d do the same again. I get it,” he said.

They ate breakfast sitting on the wall overlooking the lake, watching wind cause moving patches of ripples over the calm water. Tony enjoyed the companionship, when Loki sat down near him and leaned into him for a moment before shifting so they were both comfortable, touching but not cramping each other. A week passed, then two. Tony attended virtual conferences, tinkered in the lab, produced a new phone with touchable hologram projections, and a water harvesting machine for desert environments he named OWEN. He still had to think up words that would match the geeky acronym. 

He also made three new suits. When he first started work on them, he did so with a certain amount of guilt, closing the holograms down whenever Loki came into the lab. He knew he spent too long in there for a normal relationship, and he’d started to realise that was what he wanted from Loki - a real relationship. He’d only ever had one, with Pepper, and he’d destroyed that by being Iron Man. Every time Loki leaned in to kiss him over the dining table, every time he felt long arms wrapping around his waist, he thought about trashing all the plans, being satisfied with the suits he had, not re-building the Iron Legion. But then he’d come down to the lab and the greed would rise in him. Why _couldn’t_ he have both? He was Tony Stark. He had always had everything he’d wanted. Why couldn’t he have Loki’s gentle touches and the suits to keep them both safe? And he’d build until Loki had gone to sleep, and he’d crawl into bed beside him, his body aching with guilt.

One day he was stretching his spine out with a series of pops, the newest schematic for the Mark LI, when cold hands gripped his sides and two strong thumbs ran up his backbone. “Holy shit!”

“Sorry,” Loki laughed. “I thought I should check your spinal column was still in the correct alignment.”

“How long have you been there?” He did not squeak. He was a Stark, and he definitely did not squeak.

Loki tilted his head on one side and crinkled his forehead in amusement. “Half an hour, I suppose.”

Shit. He’d seen the suit designs. Tony had been _ignoring_ him for half an hour? _Fuck_.

“Are you unwell?”

“Look, I’m really sorry, I didn’t notice you come in…if you’d said something I’d have stopped and put it away, really.”

“I had no reason to stop you, Tony.”

“That’s no excuse, I shouldn’t have been ignoring my boyfr…uh…what…umm. What are we, exactly? Are we boyfriends?”

“I do not think either of us can be classed as boys, and I would venture to claim we are more than friends, although I consider you a friend as well.”

Tony grinned, unable to stop the glow in his chest, just below the great big metal glowing thing he’d put there himself. What was he, thirteen? “So what? Partners? Lovers?”

Loki thought about it, head on one side. “Tony and Loki.”

Tony raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Yeah. That’s…that’s just about perfect. Tony and Loki. We are, aren’t we?”

Loki smiled and kissed him, resting his nose against his cheek for a moment before pulling back. Tony smiled, feeling a little bit melty. “I’m still sorry for ignoring you for half an hour.”

He laughed again. “I do not think it counts as ignoring if you do not know I am there. I enjoy watching you work. And I am sure you will find me absorbed in some research or magic soon enough.”

“A…are you sure? You’re not annoyed I’m designing suits?”

“Why would that annoy me? You are Iron Man, you make suits. That is just who you are.”

“Its… _exactly_ ,” he said, spreading his hands. “That’s exactly what I am, see? You get it? You freaking _get_ it! Jeez, how do _you_ get it? You’ve known me for a couple of months. Pepper’s known me for years, and it just made no sense to her. She wanted me to pack it in.”

Loki stared. “How could you have stopped? You would have gone out of your mind with boredom - that would be like asking me to stop using magic.”

“I _know!_ I tried, you know. Giving up the suits. Managed a month after the arc reactor surgery failed, but I couldn’t do it. Pepper thought giving it up would make the nightmares go away, she thought the suits were triggering me to think about New York and the void, but they weren’t. They were my security blanket, you know? And more than that, they were my…my…”

“Your outlet?”

“Yes, my outlet!”

“You are a creative person. It has to come out somehow, or it will itch in the ends of your fingertips and squirm in your soul.”

“Yes!” Tony threw his head back and laughed with the joy of being understood. “God, I thought there was something wrong with me, that I couldn’t choose a loving relationship over the suits. I thought I was just being so selfish.”

“Well, I do not consider you so. Not that it will prevent me from carrying you out of the lab if you skip two meals in a row,” he grinned.

“OK,” Tony laughed. “I’ll do the same to you if you’re stuck in the library for more than twelve hours again.”

“How do you intend to carry me, Stark?”

“Uh, duh, I _am_ Iron Man, remember?”

***

He’d never known what this would be like. Being accepted for what he was. He was selfish and self absorbed and he’d go through phases where he didn’t want to see anyone, even the people he loved, for hours, or even days. He’d spent his life knowing that it was wrong - and because he was a privileged little rich boy he never actually had to change his ways, he just knew that people accepted him in spite of his behaviours, they _put up_ with him. JARVIS was the only one who’d accept him without judgement. Until now.

Loki just seemed not to mind. If Tony was in a creative phase, or a manic phase, Loki would entertain himself. He’d bring food down at odd times, whenever he felt like cooking for himself, and if he was looking for company he’d sit one one of the benches and read. Other times Tony would come out of a marathon session, wanting to cuddle up to Loki, and he’d find him researching Wikipedia, chatting to JARVIS, or working through massive leather-bound books that he sure as hell hadn’t put in the library. Sometimes Loki would stand up and wrap them together, reconnecting, while other times he was absorbed in his own work and barely noticed Tony come in. Tony had never been ignored. He was too loud, too nervous, too antsy. But watching Loki flip from paper to paper, frown furrowing between his eyebrows, muttering under his breath, he felt satisfied just sitting on the floor and watching him work.

He was drifting on one of those days, not sure if he was dreaming or daydreaming, but he had a vague memory through the haze of sleeplessness that he’d once tried sitting by his dad and watching him work. Howard had been buried in his work too, muttering away under his breath, fiercely poring over maps and reports. Tony must have been about seven or eight. He crept in and curled up on the sofa, just to watch his dad, just to be with him. When Howard finally noticed he was there, he’d been annoyed, called his mom to come and get him. He hadn’t been welcome. So, caught up in his memories, Tony felt a spark of worry when Loki looked up to see him for the first time in an hour and a half. Part of him expected Loki to frown, ask what he was doing there, why he wasn’t doing anything useful with himself. Instead, Loki smiled. He looked _pleased_ that Tony was there, even though he wasn’t doing anything, wasn’t bringing anything to the table. He just smiled at him, then turned back to his work, and carried on scribbling and reading and searching for another forty five minutes. His smiles were still rare and small, but when they came, they were genuine, and made Tony feel like he’d achieved something.

One of Tony’s favourite things to catch Loki doing was his drills. He’d started training before the angry red of the scars had faded to pink, shifting into loose tunics and trousers and moving like he was made of water and air. He’d start off moving slowly, like T’ai Chi, and Tony considered that he’d never seen the point of that particular martial art. It always looked ineffective. Who fights slowly anyway? But watching Loki repeat long sequences of moves, picking up speed as he went until he was whirling and striking and stamping in rhythm, he realised that maybe it was a lot tougher and less hippyish than it looked. And holy _shit_ but it was sexy.

At night he was quick to move closer to Loki, nightmares or not, curling his body around his back, or resting on his shoulder, engulfed by long limbs. He’d never thought of himself as being particularly cuddly. Hugs and cuddles and kisses and touch were for girls, real men only did those things to keep women quiet and should be done with a bit of an eye roll. He wondered now, as he turned his head to kiss Loki’s neck and linked their fingers together, if his father had ever really felt like that, or if he just hadn’t known what he was missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in Kenya helping my granny out at the moment, which either means that a LOT of writing will get done, or almost nothing will get done lol! At least the 24 hours of travel was constructive...just not for this particular fic! 
> 
> Can anyone think of a suitable acronym for OWEN? It's the obvious choice for naming a moisture harvesting machine. Well, either that or BERU or LARS...


	10. Hawkeye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint turns up unannounced.

Tony met Clint in the driveway, his heart beating just a little faster, and his smile firmly pasted on his face. “Hey, Birdy, what can I do you for? What, no Spider? Did you two have a lovers’ tiff?”

Clint rolled his eyes and gave Tony a manly, back slapping hug. “You know as well as I do that Tash would just kill me if I annoyed her.”

“That’s true. Coffee? Alcohol? Uh…whatever normal people offer guests?”

He laughed, but it sounded strained, and when he followed Tony into the kitchen his fingers were twitching against his thighs. Tony felt his heart rate increase. Did SHIELD know? Had they sent Clint to kill both of them? Or was Clint here on a revenge mission of his own? “You all right?”

He snapped his eyes over to Tony. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. Sure. Actually no. I need help.”

“What’s up?” Tony put the cafetière down and gave Clint all his attention.

“I need you to find Loki.”

Tony snorted to cover the rising panic. “He’s on Asgard, isn’t he? Ask Thor.”

Clint shook his head. “Thor came down a few weeks ago. He says Loki’s dead, but they can’t find the body, so I call bullshit. All I know is you’re the only guy with the kind of tech that even has a chance of tracing that guy, if he’s on Earth. Do you think you can do it?”

Tony opened and shut his mouth a couple of times. “Uh…that’s a lot to take in, really. So Thor says he’s dead, but what makes you think he isn’t? And why do you think he’d be on Earth even if he was alive?”

Clint twisted his lips. His eyes were wide and way too expressive for the high level agent, and he felt a stab of guilt thinking about being shacked up with the guy who'd taken his control away. “Just…just trust me, OK?”

He nodded and went back to pouring the coffee, trying to remember whether all of Loki’s things were out of the way, or if they’d have to go past any incriminating evidence to get to the lab.

And then he turned back, and the most incriminating piece of evidence was standing in his black jeans and grey t-shirt, looking at Clint like someone had just kicked his puppy.

Clint leaped off his seat. “Jesus Christ, Loki!”

Loki dropped to one knee, his right fist clenched over his heart. “I will take any punishment you have for me, Barton.”

“Wait!” Tony yelled, jumping forwards. “Clint, it’s a really long story, please, listen, I swear you’ll understand, just—“

Loki raised his left hand and a dome of green energy flared around him and Clint. He gave Tony a tiny, sad smile. “I’m sorry, Tony.” He turned to Clint again, his head tilted up and his neck exposed. “I cannot promise I can die, but if you cut off my head—“

“Loki, no!” Tony slammed his fists on the shield, hammering, desperate. He couldn't lose him, he couldn’t watch his friend kill his lover in front of him. “Please!”

But Clint dropped to his knees and held Loki’s shoulders. “What did you say to me when you let the mind gem take me?”

“You…you have heart…”

“Yeah. Get up, Loki.”

Loki stared at him, his mouth gaping, and let Clint pull him to his feet and pat his arm with a smirk. The dome disappeared and Tony fell forward, then rushed to stand beside them both, not sure what to do. 

“You…I thought you of all people would wish me dead.”

Clint rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Loki, I had you in my head for days. I won’t pretend I don’t question myself even now about it. But I’m a damn good spy, and that means I _got_ those subtle little instructions under the big ‘make the portal’ one. The ones to make everything big and obvious and eye-catching? And then there was all the other stuff.”

Loki swallowed and looked away.

“What other stuff?” Tony asked, linking his hands with Loki.

Clint rolled his eyes at the gesture. “You move fast, don’t you?”

“What. Other. Stuff?”

Clint scrunched his nose up, thinking of the words, waving his hands around. “The fucking psychic head slaps.” He turned to Tony. “He’d space out suddenly like he was listening to some other wavelength, and then he’d come back to earth with a smack. We all felt whiplash from those, Jeez.” He looked at Loki’s pale face. “Come on, sit down, man, you still look like shit.”

Loki smiled, and it wobbled on his lips. “You insist on taking care of me still.”

“You need someone to take care of you, Loki.” He flickered his eyes towards Tony and back to him. “Are you OK, though? Physically, I mean?”

Loki looked up at him and over at Tony, who sat next to him while Clint perched on the coffee table. “I…yes, I am fine.”

Clint looked at Tony, clearly not believing Loki, which, who could really blame him, he’d probably tell you he was fine if he’d lost a limb. _’Tis but a scratch!_

“I assume you’re talking about the torture scarring?” said Tony.

“Yeah. It’s scarred, then, huh? Even on a god. Shit. We’re fucked, aren’t we?” He pressed his hand over his mouth, rubbing his cheeks.

“When I first found him it hadn’t even all scarred over. It was still raw. I don’t think he had much time to heal in prison.”

“My magic was suppressed somewhat,” he muttered. “But I am still fine now.”

“When we got out of the Tesseract chamber he nearly collapsed,” Clint told Tony. “And then at the safe house, he actually did. I suddenly heard this dull throbbing in my head, where the sceptre got me, like a _whum-whum-whum_.” He opened and closed his fist by his ears in time with the noise. “So I went looking for him, thinking it was an order I hadn’t understood, and found him face down on the floor. I made him shower, but he couldn’t stand up straight, so I, like, propped him up and tried not to be sick when bits of his skin came off with the force of the water. I don’t know what that mind control was meant to be achieving, but I was so fucking pissed at whoever had done that to you,” he said to Loki. 

Loki just looked like was going to cry. “It was only meant to be a compulsion to follow my will. I only wanted you to make an obvious effort at opening the portal, and a quiet effort at sabotaging it, I did not mean for you to feel pain or upset because of it - I knew when you recovered, if you survived, that you would have enough uncertainty, I never meant to make it worse…I am so sorry…”

“It’s OK,” said Clint, patting his shoulder. “You did what you had to.”

“Sir,” JARVIS interrupted quietly. “I have analysed the brainwave data from Master Barton’s time under mind control. There is limited information as he was only present in the helicarrier for a short while under the sceptre’s influence, but his readout shows significant differences with Master Loki’s. There was a spike with a similar profile in his ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area associated with belief, rather than with fear and aggression.”

Clint shrugged, his head low. “Yeah, that sounds right. I wasn’t particularly angry or afraid when I got zapped. Just wanted to do what Loki wanted me to.” He shivered. “It took me a while to sort things out in my own head. I kinda didn’t want to say anything at first, but I shot you with that exploding arrow, hoping it would do the cognitive recalibration thing, but I guess Hulk did a better job?” Loki nodded, a wry twist to his lips. “But it was at least six months before I could be sure that the things I’d seen _were_ real, that there _was_ someone pulling Loki’s strings. And when I started saying as much to anyone, any time I suggested there might be more to it than a really bad plan to take over the world, people would just get this _look_ in their eye, they’d glance at each other, and I’d find myself left out of missions, and into extra psych evals. I stopped saying anything after that. I wondered if they were right, you know? If I’d got some sort of Stockholm Syndrome.”

“How did you figure it out?” Tony asked. He sure as hell wouldn’t be able to untangle it. He hadn’t even been able to cope with a few panic attacks.

“I got sent on an assignment in bumfuck nowhere. Seriously, the most boring fucking stakeout I’ve ever been on, sitting in a tree waiting for someone to turn up or leave. Turned out to be a bad lead, but it meant I got a whole week of sitting on my ass with nothing but my own brain for company, and sorted it all out. And I figured my decision making skills weren’t impaired, I was able to strategise and I did exactly what I would have done if Fury had given me those instructions. My senses weren’t compromised, because I could shoot just fine. The only thing off was my loyalties. And I know what I saw in that time, and it’s fucking scary. So what if there’s some residual sympathy for you left over from the mind gem? I can cope with that false feeling if it means we get rid of that Thanos asshole.”

Loki paled. “How do you know of him? I am certain I never said his name, it would have been too obvious a betrayal.”

Clint looked hard at Loki. “I met an old friend of yours.”

He rolled his eyes. “That narrows the list of possible informants to none.”

“Gamora.”

Loki let out a breath and his shoulders sagged. “She escaped, then.” 

Tony moved closer to him and rubbed his back. “Who’s Gamora?”

“She was one of Thanos’ _daughters_.” Loki spat the word, looking disgusted. “A child torn from the arms of her dead family and raised in his sickening realm to be the perfect agent. She was there when I was being…persuaded.”

“She was one of your torturers?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “She was instructed to weaken me, and she did so…physically. But at the same time she would whisper information into my ear, gave me hope. Not hope that I would survive, but that I would be able to fight his plans.”

Clint nodded. “She got on well with Natasha.”

“How is it that you met her?”

“She’s been hanging around with this group of misfits, call themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy. It seems to be led by her and a mostly-human called Peter Quill,” Clint snorted. “Or Starlord.”

Tony snickered.

“You’d get on well with him, Tony, he’s got an ego to match yours. Anyway, their spaceship turns up in fucking Mombasa of all places, and because he’s originally American and, well, because SHIELD, we get sent out to meet them.”

“You had alien visitors and didn’t invite me?” Tony put his hand over his heart, hurt and offended. “This is becoming a theme with you, Tweetie-Pie.”

Clint flipped him off without even looking at him and continued. “They gave us all this stuff about Thanos and someone called The Other.” Loki flinched at the name and Clint raised his eyebrow. “You know him?”

“How did you say it? The ‘psychic bitch slaps’? They were his work.”

“Well,” Clint smiled grimly, “you’ll be glad to know he’s dead.”

Loki nodded, his eyes unfocussed. “You OK, Lokes?” Tony asked.

“He promised that I would long for something as sweet as pain, should I fail,” Loki said quietly, staring out of the window. “I should feel angry that his death did not come at my hand, but I cannot. I am simply relieved.”

Tony wrapped both hands around Loki’s fingers, rubbing them with his thumbs. “But that’s not the only reason you wanted to find Loki, right?”

Clint shook his head, looking slightly crazed. “Thanos…he’s after your kids.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mean cliffhanger? Bit _too_ mean? Sorryyyyyy!
> 
> So people might have noticed the tags have changed, and that this is now part of a series. I reached a natural stopping point, and was finding it very difficult to transition to the next arc of the story - I realised there needed to be a few months' jump in time, hence there's going to be at least one more fic in this series! I haven't started writing that - I think it's also going to be completely Tony's POV, but I'm still not 100% sure on that. Hope you like the direction this is going though!
> 
> By the way, forewarning...Loki cries a _lot_ in the rest of this fic. He's completely justified to my mind, but just letting you know if you don't like that sort of thing!


	11. Hidden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki deals with the possibility that his children are alive...and other much worse possibilities.

Tony held his breath. Loki’s lips curled up in a snarl and he huffed a humourless laugh, pulling away from Tony. “My children are dead, Barton.”

Clint looked as sorry as Tony had ever seen him. “They aren’t, Loki. They’re alive. Listen…” he shifted around on the coffee table, leaning forward to grab Loki’s hands and unclench his fists, trying to stop him from digging his nails into the palms of his hands. “OK, here’s the thing. Gamora was aware of some of the invasion, she says she used it as a distraction to escape, but she started asking about it, like what we’d done to keep the mind gem and the Tesseract safe. She asked about Loki, and Tasha shut her down. Gamora figured out who I was just by the way Tasha looked at me, I think.”

Loki snorted. “I have never been Gamora’s enemy, but I can imagine she would be the only true match for Romanoff’s skills.”

“Anyway Gamora grabbed me afterwards, shoved me up against a wall. Fuck, she’s scary.” He sounded approving, and Tony wondered whether he really wanted to meet this woman or really wanted to avoid her. “She asked if I was one of the ones under the control of the gem, what I knew of your motivations, all that jazz. I said her intel on Thanos was making me look a hell of a lot less crazy. So she told me I need to find you, like it’s fucking essential. She said he’s on his way to the Nine Realms now, which I’m assuming is some sort of cluster of planets or some shit? I mean, he’s light years away, still, but we don’t know what kind of tech he’s packing, so we need to find your kids, like, yesterday.”

“Barton,” Loki said, very slowly, with the kind of infinite calm that suggested he was livid, “My. Children. Are. Dead.”

“I’m so sorry, but they aren’t. Gamora said you’re not the only one who survived the trip through the void. Others have fallen out of the Nine Realms, which is just fucking careless, really. She said you were the only one who survived longer than a few hours, but there have been a handful of others. Particularly relevant to you, a guy from Asgard, about a hundred years ago. He died quickly, but The Other was able to tear all his recent memories out, they did that to all of them, she said. Apparently he was arguing with a king about these children being lost on Jotunheim, living - _living_ , Loki - with some witch. And when _you_ turned up, and The Other found all your memories of your kids, he made the connection. Seems like he could see memories, so he recognised their faces.” Clint gulped. “She says Thanos thought it was…it was _funny_ that you didn’t know they were alive. He was always going to use them as your punishment if you failed. Find them and raise them himself, and turn them on you…I’m so sorry, Loki, that’s why we need to get there first.” 

Loki’s face had gone grey and his hands trembled as he put them to his lips. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry, man, but we’ve got to get moving. Gamora said as they’re yours the chances are they’ll be more powerful than her and Nebula, and if he makes them loyal to him…”

“I cannot,” he roared, leaping up and pacing to the centre of the room. The air thickened and Tony could taste static on his tongue. “I _cannot_ allow myself this false hope! I will not survive grieving them again when I find this is a lie, a trick…this is his punishment! He makes me hunt for my children while he watches me fall apart when I fail? No! I will _not_ fall for it!”

“Loki,” Clint snapped. “You _have_ to and you know it. You can’t assume this is a trick, because you know as well as I do when it comes to our kids we’ll follow any fucking wild goose chase, any _hint_ of a possible lead.” Tony frowned at him, confused, as he stood and gripped Loki by the shoulders, almost shaking him. “Look, I get it, you know I do. You _know_ that. And I wish I could let you fall apart because I understand how you want to, but you have to grab all those broken pieces and hold them together just until we check this out.”

“And if we never find them?” Loki’s voice was quiet and terrified and a little bit broken, and he slumped so much he looked smaller than Clint.

“Then you come back here and you fall apart where we can look after you, OK?” Clint made him meet his eyes, then hugged him tight. “I found out about the wards on the farm, you fucking psycho. Some Hydra assholes tried to get to me through them, found them wandering the woods with severe memory loss. When did you get time to do that?”

“While you were looking for the iridium and a horrific enough reveal.”

“Thanks, Loki.”

“It was the least I could do to keep them safe, having put you in so much danger. The others received similar…gifts.” He shuddered and turned away, pacing towards the window. “Clint, you do not understand. Jotunheim is…it is not possible that my children would have been left alive, the Jotnar are monsters, they…they brought Sigyn’s body back in…in _pieces_ and—“

“But not the kids, huh?”

Loki was quiet.

“Loki, what if you’ve been played?” Tony asked softly, his heart aching for him. Loki still said nothing, didn’t even move. In fact, Tony wasn’t even sure he was breathing. He stood up and came closer, noticing the slight tremor in his hands which was only increasing. “Loki?”

The moment he touched him he turned, and a shuddering, gasping breath broke, and he gulped in air again and again, clutching at Tony’s shirt with one hand and at his own face, trying to _hold_ the tears in physically. “Shit, Tony, he’s having a panic attack,” said Clint, coming to wrap his arm around Loki’s waist. Together they dragged him to the couch where he rocked back and forth, hyperventilating and clutching at his hair. He wasn’t even sobbing, the sounds he made were inhuman, and Tony could feel the goosebumps rising on the back of his neck as he petted him and tried to calm him down.  
 “What do we do?” he asked Clint. He couldn’t admit that his own anxiety was rising, he had to focus on Loki and get him through this before he fell apart himself.

“It’s OK.” Clint reached over and squeezed his shoulder, and his eyes said he knew exactly what Tony was thinking. “We just try help him ride it out. The absolute worst thing that can happen is he blacks out. Gives his body time to calm itself down by taking the conscious brain out of action.”

Tony stopped and stared at him. “Seriously? It doesn’t, like, end up causing a heart attack or something if you don’t snap out of it?”

Clint grinned. “Nah. It feels like it though. It’s fine. Hear that, Lokes? You’ll be fine.”

“I will not!” His voice had this thin note of hysteria running through it, high and reedy. “I cannot…it will never be OK…I…what have I done? I have killed them…I killed…I destroyed them…I have…I have killed my…”

Clint wrapped his arms around him, shushing him as his words became incoherent. “What’s he talking about?”

The realisation hit Tony so hard he sat back against the arm rest, boneless. “Fuck. Shit. Fucking shit fuck. Oh my fucking god, Clint, it’s really bad.”

“ _What?_ Tony, what? You’re freaking me out here too, just fucking… _what?_ ”

Tony had to sit for a moment, rubbing his face, trying to get the feeling back into his skin. “Oh fuck, Clint…something he told me back when I first got him to Earth…he tried to destroy Jotunheim a few years ago when he found out he was Jotun. I didn’t get why at the time, seemed like a fucking overreaction to me, but it made a bit more sense when he explained about his kids being killed by the Jotnar and now…oh god…”

Clint’s face had gone pale and his jaw hung open. “Oh, fuck.”

Loki suddenly disappeared, leaving Clint to fall forwards on the sofa and look around wildly. At the same time an inhuman scream came from upstairs, and the two humans looked at each other. “Teleportation,” said Tony, and they raced upstairs. Loki was on his knees in one of the spare rooms, screaming, hands clenched into claws as he bent double. The entire room was trashed, every piece of material torn, every solid structure smashed to splinters. A green haze was gathering around Loki as he heaved in another deep breath, and Tony shoved Clint behind the wall on instinct, slamming the door. It didn’t survive. The wood shattered into dust, a green blaze cutting through and scorching the opposite wall, and Tony sheltered his head as another howl tore the air.

At last the only noise was quiet but insistent sobs. Tony and Clint poked their heads around the corner cautiously. Loki was curled up on the floor, his head resting on the ground and his arms wrapped around his middle, his body shaking. At least he wasn’t hyperventilating any more. Tony approached, making sure he made plenty of noise. Not that it was hard, walking on shattered pieces of whatever. He sat down next to Loki and pulled his head and shoulders onto his lap, stroking his hair. Clint came in and leaned against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor. As the sky darkened, Loki’s sobs became quieter, and eventually he fell asleep on Tony’s lap.

***

“So,” said Clint, handing Tony a plate of honey toast and sliding back down the wall to the floor. “You and Loki? How long’s that been going on?”

“I found him on some other planet during that convergence Thor was involved in, down in Greenwich, mostly dead.”

Clint flickered a grin at the reference. “I didn’t know you were involved in that.”

“I wasn’t. I flew over there to help and got sucked into a portal before I could fire a shot. He was lying on the sand bleeding everywhere. To be honest I considered leaving him there, I mean, it’s _Loki_ , you know?” 

Clint shrugged and nodded, mouth full of toast. “What changed your mind?”

“I don’t know,” he laughed, humourless. “I’m not that much of an asshole I guess? I dunno, what would you do if you found someone, even your worst enemy, crying and in pain? And obviously I’m glad I picked the guy up, or I’d still think he _was_ the enemy.” Tony cocked his head on one side. “Why didn’t you say something straight after Natasha got you out?”

Clint thought about it for a moment. “I dunno. My first instincts were so damn scrambled. The change under that mind stone was so subtle, it really was me making all those decisions, I just had different motivations. So I guess at first I wanted to prove to you all that I was cured or something. And I _was_ pissed. I hated him for a long time, he put me through this, you know?”

“And then when you figured it all out? You know you could have talked to one of us, you all had an open invitation to the tower after everything.”

Clint snorted. “I’ve hardly seen you since the invasion, Tony. You moved to Malibu after a few months. I don’t know you well enough to just turn up on your doorstep with anything less than ‘can you help me look for Loki’, do I?”

Tony hid his hurt. He’d hassled everyone for weeks after the invasion to move into Stark Tower, and none of them took him up on it. Bruce stayed for a week to play in the lab, but then he’d just packed up his bag and waved goodbye one day. Tony had tried to convince everyone the A on the tower was an omen, that they _had_ to make it Avengers tower now, but they all turned him down politely. It was probably for the best. He hadn’t been able to cope living so high up anyway, not after the portal. And at the time he thought he’d have Pepper for ever, so he didn’t need the Avengers.

Clint threw his plate to one side and crouched down as Loki’s eyes fluttered. “Hey, Lokes, you with us?” He lay flat on the floor to face Loki, whose eyes were now open and flat, lifeless, like Tony hadn’t seen them before. “C’mon, man, I know things are shit. I know it looks bad. But we’ve got to try. We have to get to Jotunheim.”

“It is no use, Barton.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I have destroyed the realm of monsters and with it my own children.”

“No, hold on,” Tony said, his mind racing and an undercurrent of dangerous hope. “You said you failed, didn’t you? You _tried_ to destroy Jotunheim, and Thor arrived and broke the Bifrost?”

“What is the point, Stark?” Oh, look at that, back to Stark already. “I turned the Bifrost on my own people, thinking they had murdered my children and my husband. I hoped that it I destroyed them all I could no longer be one of them, could prevent any others from losing children and loved ones to creatures like me. And in my blindness, I have committed the crime I was trying to avenge.”

Clint’s lips narrowed, and from his position on the ground he slapped Loki upside the head. Tony’s eyebrows raised, and the fire in Loki’s eyes ignited as he turned a focused glare on Barton. “Get your head out your ass, Loki,” Clint snapped. “If there’s any chance at all your kids are alive we have to follow this lead.” His eyes flickered to Tony and back, and softened. “And if we find you’re right, if the worst comes true…I’ll help you find a way out.”

Loki’s vicious glare softened and he reached a hand out to Clint’s and squeezed. Tony watched in confusion. “What? What’s going on? Find a way out of what?” Clint looked slightly guilty, but neither of them answered. Tony’s eyebrows raised as he caught on. “Wait, did you two fuckers just make some sort of suicide pact?!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tones, suicide pacts involve both people dying,” Clint grunted.

“Are you fucking serious? You can’t go around offering to kill people!”

“Fuck you, Stark. You’ve never lost a kid.”

“Neither have you! You don’t even have kids!”

Clint pushed himself to his feet and snorted at Tony. “I’m calling for pizza. Anyone got a problem with that?”

“What? You don’t!” He turned to Loki. “Does he?”

Loki sat up too, his hair a curtain around his face, and sat cross legged in the wreckage of the room, but didn’t answer.

Tony stared at him. “Has Clint got kids?”

“That is not my story to tell.”

“Lokes.” Tony moved closer, rubbing his bicep. “C’mon, we’ll find them, you know that.”

Loki smiled at him, so sadly it made Tony’s heart ache. “I cannot allow myself that hope, Tony. I know it is weak but the closest I can come to hope is that Clint will be able to find me some way to join my children in the land of the dead.”

“Don’t say that,” he begged, and it _was_ begging, he wasn’t better than that. “You know, where there’s life, there’s hope. What can you do when you’re dead? At least if you’re alive you can make a difference.”

“That is what I’m afraid of. The only difference I could possibly make, especially without my children, would be a bad one. I have made nothing but bad decisions since before I lost my family.” He moved closer, linking their hands together, and Tony wanted to shake him because he was making a difference to _Tony_ , and wasn’t that enough? But of course it wasn’t, not when compared to seeing your actual loved ones in Norse god heaven, and Tony knew he was being selfish but he couldn’t help it. That’s just who he was. “I’m sorry I can’t be as strong as you, Tony. Will you help me?”

“I’ll help you _find_ them, Lokes.”

Loki lay his head against the joint between Tony’s neck and shoulder. “The one who sent me, Thanos. He, too, was unable to die, and it has driven him mad. I am afraid he has done to me what has been done to him, and I do not want to become him, Tony, I cannot.”

“You’re not him, Loki.”

“Not yet.”

Tony wanted to hold on as Loki stood up and staggered out of the door. He got as far as gripping Loki’s hand. But it was all inevitable. He sat in the rubble for a moment by himself, then narrowed his eyes. “Fuck this. I’m Tony fucking Stark. I don’t give up.”

“Quite right, sir.”

“Plot a course for Jotunheim, JARVIS.”

“I’m going to assume that’s metaphorical, sir, considering we don’t know where Jotunheim is.”


	12. Skywalker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki, Tony and Clint go in search of answers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a new chapter a day early because reasons :)

Clint was racing up and down the stairs shoving provisions in his backpack and throwing warm clothes on the sofa. Loki stood in the archway between the kitchen and living room, his shoulder slumped, just the picture of defeat. Tony spun him round, grabbed his face and kissed him hard. Loki took a moment to react, then curled his hands around his jaw and sighed into the kiss, nipping at his lower lip. 

“C’mon, Lokes. Let’s do this.”

“You will be the death of me.”

“Nope, that’s Clint, apparently.” Tony glared at Clint, who winked and raced past them to the stairs. “So I need you to give me, like, star maps or co-ordinates to Jotunheim, and then I’m gonna get on and start designing a spaceship, because I’m that awesome, and obviously I can do it. Hey! Hawk brain, what the fuck are you doing? We’re not ready to leave right now, we need a spaceship to go to another planet.”

Clint poked his head round the door and laughed. “Loki, do we need a spaceship?”

“Why would we need a spaceship?” Loki frowned slightly.

“Uh, different planet, anyone?”

Loki laughed, and Tony didn’t care that they were laughing at him if _Loki_ was laughing. “I have never needed a spaceship. Although do not tell Thor that. I made him believe we had to fly through a narrow canyon at high speeds to get to Svartalfheim. We will sky walk.”

“Sky walk? Fucking _Skywalker?_ You’re _Loki Skywalker?_ ” 

“Like long range teleportation,” said Clint. “That’s how we got to Stuttgart. Selvig was fascinated, obviously. He made Loki sit down and explain the whole thing, all the limitations, everything. I had to physically pull him away so Loki could eat and sleep.”

“Loki, you’ve been holding out on me. You never told _me_ the science of teleportation.”

“You did not ask.”

“Bet you’ve been so busy sticking your tongue down his throat,” Clint sniggered.

Tony shrugged. It was true. “So distance won’t be an issue?”

“It will drain me for a time, but it will not be impossible. You will need to wear very warm clothes.”

Clint started pulling Tony’s borrowed (stolen) ski gear on, while Tony called the suit. Yay for temperature control. “What about you?”

Loki looked away. “It will not be necessary.”

Tony shrugged and looked between Clint and Loki. “So…do we have a plan?”

“Just recon,” Clint said. “We’re just checking to see if the planet’s still there. We can’t make a plan until we know what we’re up against.”

Tony nodded. “So if we turn up in an asteroid field, we’ll know the Death Star was fully operational.” And then he felt bad, because he’d basically just turned Loki into Grand Moff Tarkin in his metaphor. And then wanted to laugh, because a few months ago he’d have considered it a perfect new nickname for the god.

Loki held his hands out for the humans, and Tony copied Clint, squeezing his eyes shut, linking his fingers with Loki’s, the gauntlet retracted. They stepped forwards, and Tony fucking _froze his ass off._

“Holy fucking shit, that’s cold!” OK, maybe a change of clothes would have been a good idea. He opened his eyes to a whirling, screaming blizzard wasteland, like he’d been dropped off on one of those David Attenborough penguin documentaries. The wind whistled over claw-like ice formations and picked ice crystals off the ground, whipping them horizontally across the plain. “Jesus, JARV, I hope you’re recording fucking everything.”

“Of course, sir.” JARVIS sounded deeply insulted at the insinuation.

“Well,” said Clint, “looks like you missed a bit, Loki.”

Loki stared around, eyes huge. Tony wondered what must have been going on in his head. He’d gone from blaming them for the death of his family, to finding out they _were_ family, to attempted genocide, to finding out his genocide revenge efforts might have killed the kids he thought were dead in the first place? Tony didn’t know what he’d be thinking either.

He shivered suddenly, and felt the heating kick up a level. Clint, in his several layers of thermal underwear and gore tec and giant fur lined puffa jacket, was adding another set of mittens over his gloves, while Loki…Loki was looking pretty fucking frozen just in his skinny jeans and t-shirt. He was still barefoot.

He turned to Tony, and the slightly desperate look in his eyes worried him. “Lokes?” But he didn’t reply. Just pulled him in, his hands on the helmet, thumbs on Tony’s cheekbones, stroking over his numbing skin. He pressed his lips against Tony’s, cold and soft, and Tony didn’t know what he was doing but he pulled him close, even in the suit, and parted his lips to deepen the kiss. “What was that for?” he grinned, when Loki pulled back.

“Because I do not know whether you will want to kiss me again when you see my true form.”

Tony was about to snort with laughter, but Loki was looking really _worryingly_ blue. Like, imminent hypothermia levels of blue. And then he was just looking really _really_ blue, with white accents, and his eyes were red, which, ironic really, considering they were usually the only blue bit of him. Loki looked up at him from a bowed head, with his red eyes all big and his forehead creased up like a sad puppy

“Woah,” Tony breathed. Then frowned. “You look different. Have you done something new with your hair?”

Loki stared at him in confusion, then creased up laughing, shaking his head. “I should have known,” he muttered. “You…you do not mind?”

Tony shrugged. “No. Hey, can I touch you?”

Loki stepped backwards, hands up. “I would not recommend it. Frost Giant skin is known to cause burning frostbite in the Aesir, I do not know how it would affect mortal skin.”

“So no blueberry sex then?”

Loki snorted and covered his mouth with his hand. Clint scrunched up his nose. “Jeez, Stark, get a room.”

“Well, not when Loki’s like this, apparently.”

“You’re such a slut, Tony.”

“You’re just jealous,” he grinned, and stuck his tongue out. “So. Jotunheim’s still standing. What next?”

Loki gazed around at the howling blizzard, looking completely lost. “I…I suppose we find a settlement. Someone who may know a witch caring for two small children.”

“What, we’re going to ask for directions? We’re men, we can’t just ask for directions.” 

“That only counts if you have a map. You don't ask for directions if there’s map reading to be done,” Clint wagged a finger at him.

“Yeah, but also, it’s not like everyone’s going to know this witch either. It would be like landing on Earth, somewhere like Tibet, and asking if anyone knows Clint Barton.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “You think that wouldn’t work? You get to Tibet, ask for Clint Barton. People don't know who the fuck that is, so they send you to a bigger town. Someone there realises it’s a Western name, so you get sent to a bigger town, where there’s more likely to be an American, Australian or European presence. You find out Clint’s an American sort of name, so you get sent to the American Embassy. They type my name into some database and find out I work for SHIELD, so some low level agent comes and interrogates you to find out who the fuck you are and why you’re asking for me. Got it?”

“Uh, yeah, whatever. Someone in the first fucking town would hand you a smartphone and you’d check Facebook.”

“So why are you bitching?”

“They don’t have Facebook on Jotunheim!”

“Stark, you’re a fucking idiot, you know that? Just go do some aerial reconnaissance.”

Tony flipped Clint the bird and shot up into the air. The cold faded into the background as he got his first real look at the new planet, the third one he’d seen in the last few months. Tony Stark, intergalactic explorer. The icy plain stretched ahead of him, and from the air he could tell it was actually a glacier, a massive blue tongue protruding between jagged, broken teeth. He flew to the East, staying high to avoid startling anyone, and let JARVIS scan for life forms. A topographical map appeared in the right hand bottom corner of the HUD, blue dots appearing on the green network to represent vital signs like Loki’s and one red dot to represent Clint. 

“Detecting life signs consistent with Master Loki’s over the ridge at your eleven o’clock.”

“Thanks JARV.” Tony banked slightly and rose above a thick cloud to give the ridge sufficient clearance, then cautiously flew downwards when the radar showed the land (scans indicated granite, boring) dropping away again.

“Oh…shit.”

The ground in front of him for almost twenty miles was a melted scar, black rock gleaming like obsidian in the weak glimpses of sunlight through the clouds. It looked like a cross between a massive claw mark and a meteor trail, and it passed straight through the centre of a town. Tony remembered pictures of the Gaza Strip, Syria, and the Haitian earthquake. Buildings had been bisected, melted in the centre and shattering, hurling pieces of brick and rubble through neighbouring structures. It didn’t look recent, there were furs and temporary structures blocking off some of the less damaged rooms, and some buildings even had scaffolding on the outside. The snow had obviously been falling for some years, filling some of the more ruined buildings completely, but it didn’t seem to stick on the glassy scar through the centre of the landscape. As he watched, a small group of Jotnar, hunched and listless, moved from one building to another, not even looking up for the source the sputtering repulsor noise. 

“Shit…JARVIS, any other settlements within range?”

“I’m afraid not, sir, this planet appears to be sparsely populated. I cannot detect any other signs of life within a radius of a hundred and fifty miles, and I doubt Master Barton could travel further than that without specialised equipment and clothing.”

“Shit.”

He flew back to the others and flipped up his face plate. Loki was casting a warming spell on Clint, a perfect opening for some terrible innuendoes about orgasm faces, but Tony was too twitchy. “So, I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Get on with it, Tony,” groaned Clint.

“OK, so I found a settlement, good news there. Bad news is that it’s probably the site of your…uh…Bifrost incident.”

Loki’s red eyes widened, then his face went completely still again and he looked straight ahead, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “That…that is probably for the best. If we go to the site of my…of my actions, we will be more likely to find out if…”

He trailed off into silence, then just nodded and led the way. Clint and Tony looked at each other and grimaced before following. Tony kept to the air, flying slowly and keeping watch. He dropped to walk beside the others as they got within sight of the settlement, not wanting to seem confrontational.

He felt sick as they approached the scar in the ground. Loki looked like he was feeling pretty fucking queasy too. He remembered the photos Christine Everhart had thrown in his face of Gulmira. The first time he’d realised that his actions had horrific consequences, that his blasé attitude towards his company, and his pathological need to please the father figures with more weapons, bigger, badder, faster, cheaper, had killed children and innocents. He focused on Loki’s face, set in an expressionless mask, and watched that moment of realisation hit someone from the outside.

Their little group was gathering attention at last, and as they walked through the street with ice crystals whirling around their feet, great looming figures were appearing at dark doorways, peering out with red eyes and bare flickers of interest. Loki’s shoulders started rising and ever time one of the inhabitants moved closer he twitched, a flicker of loathing and self-loathing spasming over his face. He’d been raised to hate these guys. Hell, he’d thought he was justified in hating them when they apparently killed his family. Tony tried to imagine finding out he was the kid of one of the Ten Rings leaders or something. Tried to imagine how he’d feel if he found out all those Ten Rings guys he’d killed in Gulmira were possibly innocent. He swallowed. His mind was actually _squirming_ to get away from the concept, and Loki was being faced with all this shit at once. He wanted to link their fingers, but the way Loki was wound tight as a spring he thought he might get thrown across the town.

They stepped onto the scar itself, aiming for a massive ruin, feet slipping immediately on the glassy surface. The edges were bubbled and Tony itched to break off a fragment and analyse it because _oh my god explosions and artificial lava_. Loki’s feet seemed to cope with the slippery surface, which made Tony want to turn him upside down and look at his alien feet, but Clint and Tony weren’t doing great. Well, OK, Clint was being a badass spy about it, walking on the balls of his feet as much as possible, but Tony was looking like a dick, slipping about in his shiny suit. He was relieved when Loki glanced at him and guided them back onto a rutted path beside the scar. But fuck, that was disturbing, because now he wasn’t thinking about falling on his face he was able to look at the houses that had been chopped in half, and that led to thinking about the people who might have been in there, sleeping or eating or chatting or playing alien video games with their buddies and…Tony set his teeth.

Loki came to a sudden stop just as JARVIS piped up. “Sir, a dozen life forms have left the large building up ahead and are traveling in our direction. Judging by the fact they are riding large creatures I would presume they are of some importance.”

Tony flicked his face plate down and Clint slipped his hands in his pockets, looking nonchalant but probably fingering about twelve different weapons with just his pinky. Loki flexed his fingers and stood straight, his chin parallel with the ground like the fucking alien prince that he was. It probably wasn’t appropriate to think of going down on him right now and finding out how long that composure lasted, but since when did Tony do appropriate? He cleared his throat and turned back to the massive reptilian lynx things with their no less massive riders. The curious inhabitants of the scarred town had disappeared from doorways. There wasn’t so much as a twitching curtain. 

Within minutes they were surrounded by a pack of snorting, growling cat-lizards. No tauntauns though, which was disappointing. The riders were silent, which was way more intimidating than insults and mockery, especially because he was _good_ at insults and mockery. 

“Laufeyson,” rumbled one of the giants _at freaking last_. Tony wondered what the hell that meant. “You dare to show your face? Do you come to claim your kingdom after you have attempted to destroy it?”

“I am no son of Laufey. I make no claims to the throne, such that it is.” Loki’s voice was dripping with lazy contempt, but Tony could see his vital signs as a tiny trace on the HUD and he was amazed he couldn’t _see_ his heart beating out of his chest the rate it was going.

The Jotun grinned and slipped off his cat creature, stalking towards him. He bent over Loki, deliberately threatening. “You could not even sit on the throne, _little_ brother. Who are these mortals that you bring with you? Do you keep such weak creatures around to make yourself appear less of a worthless runt?”

“Rude,” snorted Tony. “I’m Tony Stark, and I can fly, so fuck you, whatever your name is.”

The Jotun threw his head back and laughed, somehow managing to inject an impressive amount of snark and sarcasm into his laugh. Tony _had_ to learn how to do that. “I am Byleistr, King of Jotunheim, little one. And you are?” he turned to Clint.

“Clint Barton,” said Clint, giving him a wide, insincere smile, still flicking his eyes from one Jotun to the other. “Nice to meet you. So we’re looking for these kids.”

“About two hundred and one hundred years old, dumped here by some Aesir about a century ago, deaths were blamed on you guys, any of this ringing a bell?”

Byleistr narrowed his eyes at the trio. “Why should I give you any information? What are these children to you?”

“They are mine.” Loki’s voice cracked, the careful mask crumbling under the weight of his emotions.

“Is _that_ so? The kinslayer has offspring, and they are lost here? How…careless of you. But I ask you again…why should I give you any information? Why should I not find these children of yours and take our blood price from them, instead of from you?”

Loki stepped forwards, his hands out towards the Frost Giant. “I beg of you—“

“How many of Jotunheim’s children do you think you destroyed in your attempt to wipe us all from the world tree?” Byleistr roared, and Loki bowed his head, tears pouring down his cheeks unchecked. “How many died on that day, three years hence, when you turned the Bifrost on Utgard? _How many_ , Loki?”

“I’m sorry—“

“You are _sorry?_ You tried to kill us all! Eighty four died in the attack, Loki, eighty four. More than half were children, because your hatred burned through a place of learning. Our population wanes without the heart of our land, and you have torn away from us forty seven of our next generation, forty seven brightest stars, and you are _sorry?_ You are _nothing_ , Loki, and you deserve to have your children torn from you as ours were by your actions.” He shook his head, the fury subsiding back to a fierce ember. “You are truly an Odinson.” He turned, and the other Jotnar reined their cats around to face back to the massive ruin.

“Wait!” Loki sobbed. He stumbled forwards, twisting his hands in the air in a complex gesture, and a blue box appeared, and Tony made a mental note to get him to do that in front of every scanner JARVIS owned. “I…I have the Casket, I would return if you would but swear my children’s safety, please, I beg of you.”

The whole town went silent. Tony hadn’t realised how much noise there had been before until the entire place took a breath in and held it. He refocused on the blue box which seemed to pulse with energy.

Byleistr turned from where he’d been mounting his cat-lizard and took tentative steps back towards Loki, as if he was afraid Loki might disappear. “The Casket…the heart…”

“I beg you, please, tell me where my children are? I did not know they lived still, I believed they had been murdered by Jotnar for no reason other than they were outsiders…I…I’m so sorry, please, please let me have my children back?”

“If we tell you all we know about your children,” said Byleistr, his eyes still fixed firmly on the casket, hands out to show he was unarmed, trying to calm Loki down, “will you give us the route to our survival?”

“It…it means as much to Jotunheim?” Loki blinked tears back, looking down at the box.

“It is our source of life and magic, Loki,” breathed Byleistr, still creeping forwards. 

“Swear it,” snapped Tony, before Byleistr could touch the box.

“What?” Byleistr glanced at him, distracted by the impudent mortal or whatever. 

“You need to swear that Loki’s kids won’t come to any harm, that you’ll tell him whatever you know about them, and that the three of us and the two kids will be granted safe passage back to Earth…uh, Midgard,” said Clint, his bow now already out, and when had _that_ happened? Where did he even _keep_ that thing?

“I swear it all, in exchange for the Casket. I would swear my own life in exchange for the life of my realm,” Byleistr said, his voice cracking.

Loki stepped forwards and bowed low. “Norns grant that this may bring some relief from the pain of my actions.” He placed it in Byleistr’s hands, and a noise like a thousand bird wings fluttered around the town. Byleistr held the box at chest level for a moment, then turned to face his people, raising it high above his head with a roar that was taken up by every other Jotun within earshot. Then, without a backwards glance, he marched off to his cat creature.

“Please,” yelled Loki, panic rising in his voice again. “My children…you swore!”

Byleistr turned. “You, your mortals and your children will meet with no ill from any Jotnar. You are free to find them and then to leave us in peace. We have no interest in you if you do no further harm, for we will be gathering those who may return life to Jotunheim.”

“But…but where—“

“I do not know.”

Loki gasped like Byleistr had stabbed him and dropped to his knees. Byleistr swung himself onto the beast and pulled its reins to turn and face him. “I swore to give you any information, and I would do so if I had it, but I have no knowledge of any such children.” He nodded once, and then whirled round, the delegation thundering away to the huge building in the distance.

As soon as he’d gone Tony raced to Loki’s side and clasped his shoulders. “C’mon, Lokes, it’s OK, there’s still hope, don’t…don’t cry, babe, it’s OK.” He wished he could wrap his arms around him, his thin shoulders shaking with grief, but he didn’t want to hurt him with the suit. He was beginning to think the next best thing would be to shoot Byleistr down, because that was a fucking mean trick.

Clint dropped beside him as well, rubbing his back. “Tony’s right, it’s OK. We’ve just asked one guy, there’s still plenty of people here, we can’t give up now, Loki. We’ve got permission to find them, we just have to keep trying. C’mon, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy, didn’t we?”

“Byleistr is right,” Loki gasped, a thin note of hysteria running through his voice. “I have killed so many…I deserve this, I deserve to have had my children torn from me, I deserve—“

“No, come on, Loki, stop this.” 

But it was hopeless. Loki was rocking back and forth as the snow started to fall, sobbing the names of his children like a mantra.

“Excuse me, little ones?”

Tony and Clint whipped round, sheltering Loki and squinting into the thickening snow. A Jotun walked towards them, or hobbled, rather. She was an old one, and relatively short, which meant she was only about eight foot tall. She had a brown, ragged cloak thrown over her shoulders.

“The names, will you say them louder?”

Tony glanced at Loki, but he was working up to a full blown panic attack. Clint started shaking him, trying to get through to him. “Vali and Narfi,” Tony said, enunciating carefully. “They might have come here with an Aesir called Sigyn, and they would have been really little. Do you know anything about them?”

The old woman smiled, revealing pointed teeth and wrinkles almost as deep as her markings. “I do. I know them well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so my justification for the Jotunheim death toll being so low is their low population due to surviving on a dying planet without the casket. Losing 84 people is an horrific blow to an already dying people. It's also a number we can comprehend, therefore making it more personal and effective, I think? 47 children...I can think of 47 individual names. Sure, Loki had his reasons, and to him in his psychotic break they were good reasons, but Jotunheim isn't going to forgive him easily, I'm afraid :/
> 
> So yay! The kids are definitely alive, I've been so looking forward to confirming that ^_^ Every time one of you lovely people commented I just wanted to tell you everything lol! (Thank you for all your support!) One more chapter of torturing poor Loki, and then he meets them in chapter 14!
> 
> Gosh that makes me realise I've got to get on with writing the sequels already! I've decided to do one open ended fic with fluffy kid scenes, and then the second major fic from Loki's POV. I was planning to put the fluffy stuff in the Loki fic but the tone wouldn't match, there's going to be yet more angst (sorry not sorry!)


	13. The Iron Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Loki meets his children, explanations must be made

Loki was manic. He was setting one hell of a pace through the snow, and Tony was just relieved that this section was frozen solid because the areas with soft drifts were a fucking nightmare. He’d taken to flying half the time, carrying Clint, because the archer was starting to suffer. Not that he’d ever tell anyone. 

But nobody wanted to suggest slowing down to Loki. He’d seriously considered teleporting them blind, but they’d convinced him that arriving outside his long lost children’s house stuck half in a tree would probably be a bad idea. Deeply ironic and probably hilarious to the powers that be, or the Norns, or whatever else gods believe in, but not ideal. So instead they were marching. They had been marching for an hour and a half.

“D’you think he’ll kill me if I do the ‘are we there yet’ thing?”

“Probably,” Clint shrugged.

“Want a lift? I’m gonna see if I can see any trees on the horizon.”

“Fuck yeah.”

Clint clung to Tony’s back with his knees round his hips, and Tony sped ahead of Loki, who just glanced up and started fucking running. After marching for an hour and a half. “Your boyfriend’s fucking bonkers,” Clint yelled.

“We’re a matching pair,” Tony answered. “Only he’s fit, and I make robotic suits to do the work for me.”

Clint laughed, then yelled and pointed. “Thank fuck for that! Trees!”

Loki saw them too, and started full on sprinting. He kept it up for a good twenty minutes, and by the time Tony and Clint landed to march beside him, he was gasping for breath. He still wouldn’t take a break.

“Hey, Lokes, calm down. If they’re there, a couple of extra moments won’t hurt. You don’t want to collapse on the doorstep.”

Loki made no sign that he’d heard, but he did slow down. That could’ve been just because he had no other choice though.

Once they arrived in the trees, the wind was almost completely blocked. They could hear it howling around the outside of the forest, but it was almost warm between the black trunks. Clint tapped one of them with an arrow, and it made a hollow sound, a cross between a thunk and a clang. “Can see why they call it the Iron Wood.”

“Hello, Iron Wood,” Tony yelled. “I am Iron Man!”

“Stark, shut up,” Loki snapped. “You do not know who else could be living in this forest.”

Clint flicked Tony on the nose, and Tony turned to him with a silent ‘owww’. He didn’t return the favour with metal fingers because, yeah, he kinda deserved it. He satisfied himself with taking every scan known to JARVIS-kind and picking up twigs, bending them here and there, tucking them into a little capsule on his hip. He may not be a botanist, but these things were like the flexibility of willow with the strength and texture of metal, and they were way too cool not to investigate.

He spun around as a figure raced from tree to tree just in his peripheral vision. “What?” Clint whispered.

“Someone just appeared and disappeared off my scanners,” he muttered.

“What the fuck does that mean?” he asked, then whirled round with his bow raised. “Did you see that?”

“No.”

“Fuck this Blair Witch Project bullshit.”

“There! I definitely saw someone!”

“Quiet,” Loki muttered, but he was twitching at sounds and rustles as well. The three walked on, Loki on point, Clint and Tony watching the flanks and rear with JARVIS scanning as far as he could in every direction.

Suddenly, Tony walked into Loki. He turned, starting to apologise, and froze. “What the _actual_ fuck?”

There was a fucking _zombie_ walking towards them. Grey skin, black hair, she looked like she’d stepped out of the Ring and it was freaking Tony the fuck out.

There was no need for the giant snake and wolf behind her, either. Just no need for it.

Loki stepped forwards, and Tony wanted to hiss ‘the head! cut off the head’, but thought that might make things worse. The snake and the wolf drew level with the Ring girl, heads lowered and staring at them and _oh my god_ Tony wanted out of this fucking horror movie.

“We seek Angrboda. We mean no harm to any. Will you let us pass?” Loki glanced between the three, his voice perfectly calm and polite, like he was having a diplomatic tea with the ambassador from Dwarfheim.

“Your name.” And that was creepy too. The girl spoke, as deep and rough and _zombie_ as words could possibly get, but there was a hissing and a growling underneath in the same rhythm as her speech, and Tony realised the whole trio was talking in unison.

“I am Loki,” he replied, bowing slightly. “These are my companions, Tony Stark and Clint Barton. We have the sworn word of Byleistr-King that we may seek my children unmolested. Do you know the witch Angrboda?”

“Byleistr-King holds no authority here,” the trio said, and Tony had never wanted to turn tail and run quite so much as he did right then. “We will take oaths of our own, ere we let you roam within these woods.”

“What would you ask of me?”

“Swear you will harm none.”

“I, Loki, swear upon the branches of Yggdrasil that I shall do no harm in the Iron Woods of Jotunheim lest in the defence of my children, my companions or myself.” He glowed green for a moment. “You shall get no better oath from me,” he shrugged.

The three turned to Tony. Loki nodded. “Use wording as similar as possible to my own. An oath is binding. You should swear on something essential and connected to yourself, not another person.

“Uh…I, Anthony Edward Stark, swear upon…uh…my arc reactor, that I shall do no harm in the Iron Woods of Jotunheim unless in the defence of my companions or myself - or Loki’s children if they don’t count as companions. Uh, that OK?”

Loki smiled and nodded, and the arc reactor flared slightly, making Tony’s eyes widen. “OK, that was creepy. Don’t you three have to swear the same thing?”

“As children, they cannot,” Loki said softly, and seriously, these three were fucking _children_? “An oath will not bind them until they have reached their majority.”

Clint swore on his own blood, which was gross, because his veins glowed red under his skin for a moment.

They turned back to the horror triplets, and the air around them seemed to shimmer, their bodies changing. All of a sudden the terrifying creatures were replaced with three relatively normal teenage Jotnar, two boys and a girl. The girl didn’t look dead at all, either, though her hair was still black and tangled. “Welcome to the Iron Woods, Loki, Anthony Edward Stark and Clinton Francis Barton,” she said, and her voice was _so much nicer_ when it wasn’t filtered through gravel and harmonised with a wolf and a snake. “Please, come to meet our mother.”

“Thanks. It’s actually just Tony and Clint, and I’m afraid we haven’t got time for tea, though I imagine your mom is just a fascinating person, because we’ve got to find Angrboda and two little kids. Do you know them?”

The ex-wolf grinned. Wolfishly, funnily enough. “Oh, we know them well. Angrboda is our mother.”

Clint did a little hiss and a fist pump, triumphant grin breaking over his face, but Loki turned a pale powder blue and his fingers started to shake, almost imperceptibly. He barely showed it, but Tony had been looking for his reaction, and knew he was on the verge of collapse. “Would you take us to her, please?”

The kids turned, Snake-boy jerking his head to beckon them on, and they followed. Tony’s heart was beating out of his chest. Was this really it? He couldn’t quite relax, there was too much still to go wrong. What if this Angrboda woman didn’t let the kids go? He was ready to fight, but they were outnumbered and _way_ outgunned…out-toothed would probably be the more appropriate expression, but same thing.

The trees seemed to grow closer together as they got further in, and soon they were walking single file, so it was all the more impressive when they emerged into a clearing, the weak glow of the setting sun glaringly bright now they weren't shaded by hulking black metal trees. 

Tony didn't know quite what he’d expected of Angrboda’s house. The witch of the Iron Woods? Maybe a little cottage made of gingerbread. Maybe a haunted ruin on the top of a hill. He certainly hadn’t been expecting a two storey log cabin with smoke curling out of the chimney.

The Wolf-boy pushed the door open, holding it for the rest. Tony hesitated, but decided to keep his suit on. Just because he’d sworn to act only in self-defence didn’t mean he wanted to drop that defence. But he retracted his faceplate and gauntlets, and looked around at the huge double height reception room.

The whole building was made from bare logs, probably a different species to the ones outside, because they looked a lot paler and less metallic, pretty much the same as Earth wood. A fire blazed in one corner, furs piled up in a homey jumble that two of the triplets had thrown themselves down on and were lounging like teenagers everywhere. The Snake-boy stretched himself out as close to the fire as he could get, and squirmed slightly in pleasure. Tony wondered if he was reptilian now, or if it was just residual cold from being a snake in the snow half an hour ago. A set of stairs stretched almost the full length of the large room, leading up to a second storey, closed off by hanging furs and beaded metal strings.

“ _Modir_ ,” yelled the Wolf boy, and Clint gave him the stink eye for nearly deafening him.

“Fenrir,” a soft voice replied. “The little ones are sleeping and we have guests.”

A stunning Jotun woman appeared at the top of the stairs, and Loki stepped back and bowed. Tony noticed his fingers were visibly twitching, tapping a syncopated rhythm on his left thigh while the right hand was raised in a fist to cover his heart. “Are you the Lady Angrboda?”

She quirked her perfect cupids-bow lips and walked gracefully down the stairs. “I am no Lady, Loki Friggjarson, but Angrboda is my name. What brings you to my home?” Her rust red hair shifted around her shoulders, covering her almost as well as her fur cloak, and the markings on her face were all parallel. There were a few on her chin, like Loki’s, but she didn’t have any curved ones at all, and one actually ran straight over each eye, visible on her eyelids when she blinked.

“I…” Loki cleared his throat and clenched his fists down by his sides. “I seek my children. I believed them to have been killed a century ago, along with my husband, but I have been told I was…I was mistaken.”

She tilted her head to one side. “When did you find this information?”

Loki gestured to Clint. “I was brought the news perhaps twelve hours ago.”

“And you have found me so soon,” she smiled. “Sigyn was right about you.”

A breath escaped Loki like a small explosion, and his shoulders sagged. “You knew Sigyn?”

“I speak to him every evening.”

“How…how is this possible? He is…is he well?”

“He does not live, Loki. We can communicate in other ways, through the grace of Lady Death.” Loki flinched violently at that, hunching his shoulders, and even though he tried, he couldn’t quite straighten back out all the way. 

“Please…please, I beg of you, please let me see my children.”

“I expect you to do more than just look at them, Loki. We have been waiting for you. Narfi and Vali await their _Modir_ , but now, they sleep. If you can hold your patience for but one more night, we will reunite you, and you will take them home, raise them as your own again.”

Loki stopped trying to hold back his tears, curling his arms around his body. “Please, please let me see them, I cannot bear it.”

Tony stepped forwards, furious. “Seriously, lady, if this is some trick, then it’s not fucking funny. Can’t you see what this is doing to him? Just…god, just let him see them, will you?”

She smiled, and he was beginning to fucking hate that enigmatic thing she had going on. “One more night in a hundred years will do no more harm.”

“Are you fucking sure about that?”

“I am. In fact, I believe if he were to see them now he would do more harm than good. Look at him,” she held out one long-nailed hand. “He is overwrought. We have much to explain, and Loki needs time to calm himself. The children need their rest. They are emotional and difficult when tired, as are all children, and excitement that would turn to joy in the calm morning air may mutate to hysteria and panic in the eve of a long day.”

Tony was opening his mouth to argue some more, when Clint clapped his hand on the shoulder of the suit. “She’s right, Tones. Kids don’t cope very well with stress if they’re tired, but they’re resilient little buggers when they’ve got the right support.” He turned to the woman. “Will you at least let one of us pop in on them? Will that be a good enough compromise? I just want to make sure they’re healthy, and it might calm Loki down a bit.”

The witch nodded, and gestured upstairs. “I will be sincerely displeased should you waken them, but I can tell you, at least, know what you are doing.”

He gave her a nod, slipped his shoes off, and ran noiselessly up the log steps. Tony opened the suit and lifted Loki up from his hunched position. He shifted back into an Aesir form and wrapped his arms around Tony, soaking his shirt within moments, and Tony whispered quiet little reassurances and scratched the skin on his side gently.

“I cannot take this, Tony,” he whispered. “I cannot.”

“I know, babe,” he said. 

He could feel Loki’s resolve and pride form itself into a mask, and he pulled himself straight, wiping his face and holding his chin level with the floor again. When Clint came out of the room grinning, and nodded at Loki, he closed his eyes and sank to his knees. “I am forever in your debt for keeping my children safe.”

Angrboda put her hand under his chin, and his skin colour bled white to blue from the contact. “I do not keep them from you to be cruel, Loki. If you had but seen them you would not be able to resist waking them, and there is much we must discuss before you take them home. Will you sit with me?”

Loki nodded, and the group walked over to the fire. With a flick of her fingers Angrboda conjured up seats for all of them. Tony pulled Loki down next to him on a low, russet coloured sofa and linked their fingers together.

“Hela, Jormungandr, Fenrir, will you bring our guests refreshments?”

The three kids nodded and disappeared.

“How came you to care for my children?” Loki asked, and Tony could hear the slight tremor in his voice that was holding back more tears.

“For our tale, I will need two more tellers,” she said, and threw a handful of what looked like glitter into the fire, which hissed and released a foggy smoke. “It is time,” she called, and the fog started to coalesce into two figures. Fucking _magic_.

Loki cried out and covered his mouth with both hands, the tremors spreading to his whole body. Tony could feel them when he stroked his back, trying to calm him down. 

“Mother…Sigyn…”

Ah, shit. This was going to be even more emotional than Tony was expecting.

“Darling…I’m so happy to see you,” the woman smiled, her hand on the other ghost to give him some moral support.

“Mother…Frigga…my…my Queen” Loki fell to his knees again, head bowed. “I sent the Kursed to you, I did not know…I am so…oh Norns, I am so sorry—“

“Oh Loki,” she sighed. It came out as a cross between a laugh and a sob, and she held her hand over her heart. “You will _always_ be my son, please do not deny me now, darling. You had nothing to do with it. He was drawn by the Aether infecting Jane. Do not blame yourself, my love.”

Loki’s face crumpled and he curled over his body like he was trying to shrink. “The last thing I said to you…I denied you then…I have no _right_ to call you mother…”

“Sweetheart,” she said, her smile wobbling. “You could have denied me a thousand times. I would have been your mother still. But we are here about your own children, my love.”

The man who’d been standing by Loki’s mom stepped forwards now. “Loki…Lopt…”

“I am so sorry,” gasped Loki.

“No, no, I am sorry, I should not have run…I should not have taken your children from you. Man or woman you have adored our babies with everything in you and I was…I was cruel in my fear. I swear to you, I had realised this within days, and I…I was returning to you…” 

Loki gulped in a huge shuddering lungful of air between his uncontrollable sobs, and Tony pressed his forehead against Loki’s shoulder, wishing he had some way of taking some of this pain away. He hated seeing him torn to pieces like this. 

Sigyn was looking pretty broken up too, like he hadn’t realised quite how much this would affect Loki. Tony wondered bitterly if he’d really known him at all. That was a completely objective thought, and had nothing at all to do with childish jealousy. Of course. Even Clint had moved to the sofa and was rubbing the back of Loki’s neck.

“Loki,” said Frigga, “I have some small understanding of how much this must be tearing you apart.” She gave a small smile. “I, too, have lost my baby, and had him returned to me. But my darling, we must tell you the whole story. I did not know any of what had transpired until I arrived in Lady Death’s domain and met Sigyn again. As soon as he explained everything, I tried to contact you through your dreams. We both did, but, oh, Loki, the shields you have around you now…my darling, what _happened_ to make such barriers necessary?”

“You…you were sending messages?” gasped Loki, ignoring the last question. “I…” he covered his face and his whole body simply shook with sobs.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt,” Tony said, looking up from wrapping his arms around Loki. “I think Loki thought you were yelling at him, like, blaming him.”

Frigga and Sigyn looked at each other in horror. “Oh, Norns, no, of course not! Oh, Loki, what have we done to you?”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” said Clint, “what actually happened here? How did the kids end up with Angrboda?”

Frigga took Sigyn’s hand in both of hers, and he took a deep breath. Tony hoped JARVIS was videoing this shit because Loki really wasn’t in a place to be appreciating all the subtleties of the conversation right now. His hysterics had muted slightly, and he forced his control back, sitting back on the chair and wiping his eyes so he could look at his dead husband.

“When I took Narfi and Vali, I returned to Asgard, to my mother and father,” Sigyn said. “I had not seen them since we married, and they were…well, they were both furious and delighted with the children. I had planned to stay there for some time, but when Narfi kept asking for his _Modir_ , I started to feel…guilty, I suppose. I went back to our house, but you were gone.” 

He sighed and ran both hands through his hair. “I do not know why I thought it would be a good idea. When you changed...turned, I had recognised you as a Prince of Asgard, so…I went to the palace.” Loki sucked in a gasp and Sigyn grimaced. “I know, I know, it was foolish, to say the least. I thought Thor, at least, would be sympathetic. He had been my friend - he adored you. I thought I could tell him everything. I was wrong.” 

Loki’s eyes were wide as he stared between his mother and Sigyn in horror. “What… _Thor_ was involved? I cannot…he is the worst liar in the Nine Realms, how is this possible?”

Sigyn sighed. “He was not involved in my death or our banishment. He was, however, furious with me…said that I had defiled you, brought shame upon the house of Odin, that our…that our children were abominations…I think he was ready to challenge me to an honour duel when Odin arrived. He convinced Thor to leave, said that the situation must be dealt with in silence to avoid scandal.” Frigga was clenching her fists. She and Loki had exactly the same heartbroken, furious expression on their faces. Sigyn, on the other hand, wrapped his arms around himself before continuing, not looking at Loki any more. “I…I thought he might send me and the children away. I did not realise _where_ he planned to send me.”

“You did not find your way to Jotunheim by accident,” whispered Loki. 

Sigyn shook his head. “He sent Einherjar to collect the children. They were…they were terrified when they were brought to the Bifrost observatory. One of the soldiers, he had been a friend, we grew up together. He was trying to calm Vali. He even protested when the Allfather told Heimdall to set the Bifrost to Jotunheim, though Odin threatened to send him with us. And when he was told to give me the children, he whispered the name Angrboda in my ear.”

“How did he know about you?” Clint asked.

Angrboda gave a lazy half smile. “Just because travel to and from Jotunheim is forbidden, does not mean it does not happen. If Odin could see past his own prejudices he would know I am more powerful than he will ever be. Since I am but a Jotun to him, and a woman at that, he cares not of my existence, and does not watch my movements. But I have been to Asgard.”

“But…” Loki sat forward, hand still rubbing his face, “how did you die, Sigyn, I…I saw your body…”

Sigyn looked at Frigga, who nodded and patted his arm. “I…” he took a deep breath and started again. “When the Bifrost was warming up, just before it opened, I asked Odin to…to tell you I was sorry. That I still…cared for you. I did not expect him to get so _angry_ …he was enraged. He fired on me with Gungnir, I…I think if the Bifrost had not taken us right then, he would have turned on the children as well…Loki…I’m so sorry, I have endangered our children…”

Loki had frozen, but he stood suddenly and walked close to Sigyn’s ghost. “No! Do not say that, Sigyn, this is not…this is not your fault. None of it. I will _kill_ him for what he has done!” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then held his hand up like he wanted to touch the man’s cheek. He sagged, his shoulders slumping again. “It is my fault. I should never have lied to you in the first place. But…” he looked up guiltily, “I cannot be sorry, not when Narfi and Vali have graced our existence.”

Sigyn laughed softly. “No. I cannot regret anything that lead to our children. Have…have you seen them?”

Loki glared at Angrboda. “I have not been allowed to.”

“Loki,” she chided. “You know this was needed first.”

“I…I will not be able to believe they are well until they are in my arms.”

“Of course,” she nodded, and finally took a seat opposite Clint. Loki stayed standing in front of Sigyn, and Tony wondered if he still loved him just the same. Not that he was jealous or anything. Nope. 

“I must admit,” Angrboda continued, “that although this day has been foretold, and I have been prepared for it, I shall be grieved to lose the children.” Loki looked at her shaprly, suspicious, and she laughed. “Fear not, Loki. I shall also relish my freedom.”

“I can never repay you…”

“No, and nor should you. It was not done for reparations,” she said. “However, I would ask a boon of you.”

“If it is within my power, anything.”

“You and I are fated to care for one another’s children,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “I would ask that you take each of my own children under your protection when they ask for it. Show them the Nine, and more. I have my own pathways through the realms, but you are the Skywalker, and possess more _seidr_ from two realms than my body can contain, though it may pain me to admit it. Will you agree to host my children from time to time, when needed or wanted?”

Loki looked up at the three kids, leaning against the wall near the kitchen. “It would be my great honour.”

Angrboda grinned, showing her pointed teeth, and rolled her head towards the door. “Are you three going to hover in the background or will you bring the refreshments now?”

“We did not want to disturb, _Modir_ ,” smirked Jormungandr.

“Oh, I am sure you did not want to interrupt your eavesdropping.”

Hela handed Tony a rough earthenware mug of steaming something and nodded to the ghosts. “Lady Frigga.”

“Good evening, Hela,” Frigga smiled. “The Lady has missed you this past fortnight. She begs me to invite you for tea tomorrow.”

Hela nodded. “I would be delighted to join you.”

“Wait, what?” Tony asked. “How do you join a ghost for tea?”

“My daughter is blessed by the love of Lady Death,” said Angrboda fondly, as if she was just boasting about her daughter’s grades or something. “She has long been ill, and came so close to death once, not long ago…but the Lady’s grief and grace moved her to return my daughter to me, on the condition that she returns as her companion from time to time.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised and he blinked hard. “OK. Yeah. That’s pretty cool.”

Hela laughed. “You are welcome to say it is…what do Midgardians say these days? Creepy?”

“OK, you’re all creepy. This place is like a friendly horror movie. You got me.”

Fenrir laughed and snapped his teeth at Tony cheerfully. “We take that as a compliment.”

Tony rolled his eyes, but couldn’t suppress a smile. Jormungandr gave Loki a mug and he nodded his thanks and came to sit back next to Tony again, fiddling and barely touching the soup. Tony squeezed his knee. “You OK?”

He hesitated, then nodded once. Frigga smiled to see them. “Loki, will you not introduce me to one who cares for you?”

Tony looked up, guilty. He hadn’t been expecting this to turn into a Meet the Parents gig. Loki smiled shyly and linked their fingers together. “Mother, this is Anthony Stark, of Midgard.”

“Tony, please,” he said. Frigga bowed, a little smirk on her lips that Tony wasn’t sure if he liked or wanted to hide from. Sigyn had his head on one side as if Tony was intriguing rather than an object of jealousy. But then again, it seemed like Sigyn was straight as an arrow and raised in a homophobic environment, so he really didn’t have any interest in Loki. Tony shifted that little bit closer to Loki, wanting to prove that Loki didn’t have to pretend to be anyone different now, not with him. He certainly didn’t have to pretend to be a woman, not that Tony would be averse if he _wanted_ to be a woman or anything. Knowing Loki he’d be the hottest woman in history.

“So,” said Clint. “How did you find Angrboda when you turned up on Jotunheim with a magical injury?”

Sigyn turned to face him. “We arrived on the plain outside Utgard. I am sure if there hadn’t been a hunting party of Jotnar nearby I would have died within moments - the blast from Gungnir had struck me in the chest, and I knew I would not survive.” He closed his eyes, clenching his fists. “It was the worst, the most powerless I have ever felt. And when the Jotnar arrived I thought - I _knew_ \- they would tear us apart. When one crouched next to me and started wrapping my wounds with furs, and trying to calm the children, I…I was nearly shocked speechless. Everything we had been told about the Jotnar…” he shook his head. “I knew I did not have long. I kept saying ‘Angrboda, Angrboda’, and the men carried us here on their _veidkottr_.”

Angrboda nodded. “When they arrived, Sigyn was too far gone. I am sorry I could not save him, Loki.”

Loki had one hand clenched around Tony’s, while the other was squeezing nails into his palm. “They brought his body back…it was torn to pieces…”

She shook her head. “I am sorry, Loki. We could not have Odin learning where the children had been taken. I am sure I could protect them from a direct attack, but we preferred to keep them hidden until you arrived here yourself, as you were fated to do.”

“But how could I possibly know to come here?” he demanded, eyes blazing. “I believed that they had been killed, I…I tried to destroy Jotunheim because I believed the Jotnar had killed my innocent children, how could you…how could you allow this to happen?” 

“I allowed _nothing_ , Friggjarson,” she growled. “I can taste the threads of fate, but I had no way of contacting you, no way of knowing your mind would break in such a way. Do not blame the atrocity on another - _your_ choices, and yours alone, led to their deaths.”

Loki shrank in on himself, hunched up, hands pressed between his legs, ignoring Tony’s attempts to comfort him. Angrboda’s fierce expression relaxed and she leaned forwards slightly. “I do not say your actions were without reason. But they were your actions. Now, you have returned the Casket to Jotunheim, and that will go a long way to repairing the damage wrought by a thousand years of deprivation. It may even save more lives than you took, in the long run. This, too, was your action. Own it, and all others.”

Loki nodded, but kept his shoulders up around his ears. All Tony could do was rub little circles into his bony spine. Angrboda sat back. “It is late. We have a spare room, which Loki and Tony may take. Clint, I would offer you the use of one of my sons’ rooms, but I believe a couch and furs in this room may be less…well…” she narrowed her eyes at her children. “Disgusting.”

The two boys looked smug, and Clint laughed. “I’ll be more than happy with a nest of furs in here, thanks.”

Angrboda smiled again, that smirk with her eyes half lidded, like she knew literally everything and everyone was just amusingly beneath her. She waved a hand and a pile of furs and pillows appeared by Loki and Tony’s couch. Loki stood up and approached his ghosts.

“Will I see you again?”

Frigga hovered her hand just by his cheek and cocked her head affectionately. “Only if it is needed, my love. You need not fixate on the dead when there is so much life to live.”

He bowed his head and closed his eyes. “I have so many regrets…”

“As do we all,” Sigyn said quietly. “Please…look after our children, Loki.”

Loki nodded. “With every breath,” he whispered.

Sigyn and Frigga looked at each other and nodded. Sigyn stepped forwards and raised his hand to Loki’s shoulder. The moment he touched him, he disappeared in a shimmer of light. Frigga walked as close to Loki as she could without touching him, then held both her hands up to his face. “I love you, my son. I always will, _always._ Never doubt that, please.”

“I love you to, mother,” he gulped.

She smiled, her lips wobbling, then pressed her forehead to his and disappeared as well.

***

Angrboda led them to a cosy room off the ground floor corridor and left them standing in the middle of the room. Tony frowned to see Loki still twitching, all the emotion still bubbling up in him from the whole horrific experience. He stood right in front of him and linked both their hands together.

“You OK, babe?”

Loki let out a long breath and leaned against him. “I cannot process this, Tony. I am mere metres away from my children, I want to snatch them away and hold them close, never let them go again, and yet I know she is right to introduce me to them slowly. I just…” he trailed off, the words stuck in his throat. Tony wrapped his arms around Loki’s waist and tried to absorb some of the tremors. “Tony,” he whispered. “What if they do not want me?”

“What? Are you kidding me, Lokes? You’re their mom, of course they’re going to want you.”

“I have not been there for them, not for a hundred years. They would be within their rights to believe I had abandoned them. They have had a family here all this time - am I doing the right thing, taking them away from a…a mother like Angrboda?”

“You’ll kick Angrboda’s ass at being their mom, Loki.” He leaned back and held Loki’s face in his hands, rubbing at the tears soaking his cheeks. “She’s been telling them about you for all these years. They’ve been _waiting_ for you, babe. They’ll love you straight away.”

“And if I am a disappointment? What if I do not live up to expectations? I have never lived up to expectations—“

“Bullshit. You’ve exceeded mine already.”

He half smiled. “You have not known me long enough.”

“I’ve known you long enough to know some things.” He held him close again, rocking him slightly. “I know you’re kind. I know you worry a _lot_ , and you think about everything far too much. I know you care about certain people so deeply it hurts you, and a lot of those people don’t even deserve it.”

Loki pressed his nose into Tony’s neck. “Tony…”

“Yeah, babe?”

“Will you distract me?”

Tony grinned. “Now how could I possibly distract a god?”

He laughed softly, but slipped his thumb under the hem of Tony’s t-shirt and stroked the sensitive skin on his hips. Tony closed his eyes as the goose bumps popped up wherever he touched. He turned his head and kissed Loki’s neck, hearing his breath quicken.

“C’mon,” he said, guiding him backwards to the bed, and pushed him on his back. “If you want me to distract you, we’re doing this my way.”

Tony had never been one for taking things slow. But he wanted this to last for as long as possible, kissing away every fear, every bad memory of the night, take Loki out of his own mind and completely focused on his body. 

He knelt over him, crawling between his bent knees, and stroked the hair out of his face. Loki started to reach up to undress him, and he pushed his hands gently back down onto the pillow, kissing his wrists and running his nails down to the elbow. He bent down and tucked one hand behind Loki’s head, sliding fingers through the long hair at the back of his neck and tilting his head up to give him better access to his neck. He ran his lips down his jaw bone, letting his beard scratch gently against his sensitive skin, then licked and kissed his neck, right behind the jaw, along his Adam’s apple, down to the hollow above his sternum. He spent an eternity feeling the soft breaths become rougher, pulling out gasps when he ran his teeth down Loki’s collarbone, and when he took his earlobe into his mouth and sucked gently. 

Loki arched his back when Tony slipped one hand under his t-shirt and ran his rough fingers across the smooth skin of his stomach, and the sensitive scar on his chest. He lifted the shirt, riding it up until it exposed his beautiful body inch by inch, and kissed every inch. Loki moaned when he rolled his tongue along one nipple, then the other, and Tony felt himself straining against his pants when he looked up to see this divine being with his eyes fluttering shut, cheeks flushed and black hair spread across the pillow. He pulled Loki’s shirt off, and his own, to feel their skin pressed together as he leaned over him to kiss him. His hand slipped down his ribcage, scratching his side to feel him undulating underneath him. Loki had long given up trying to stay still and had his hands tangled in Tony’s hair clenching ever time Tony stroked a tiny bit closer to where he really needed him. 

When he pulled away to deal with his pants Loki whined and tried to pull him back, and Tony grinned. He stepped right off the bed and slipped his own pants and briefs down first, keeping eye contact with Loki the whole time, as his cock bounced free from the material, hard and desperate for friction. Loki bit his lower lip as Tony climbed back on the bed, but he stayed too far away for Loki to reach him, and just stroked the tops of his feet, running his hands up his calves under the jeans. Loki tipped his head back and laughed softly, a deep, throaty sound that shot spears of pleasure right through Tony’s body. 

He knelt forwards and ran his hands up the outside of Loki’s legs, which took a long time, because _shit_ were those legs long. And Tony planned to tease every piece of them. He undid the button and the zip, avoiding any contact with Loki’s straining erection, and slipped the jeans down his ass, over his knees, and off his ankles. His boxers had a damp mark where his cock was leaking precome, and Tony leaned over him, blowing on it to make the spot cool, and to see Loki tilt his head back, exposing his long neck. He stroked and kissed each leg from the ankle up to mid thigh, smiling as Loki moaned when he stopped and abandoned one to start on the next.

At last he slipped Loki’s boxers down, releasing his cock to curl over his abdomen. He ran his fingertips behind one knee and up his thigh while he bent down to kiss the other thigh, climbing closer and closer. Loki’s breathing was coming in harsh gasps, and his hands clenched the furs covering the bed. Tony nipped at his hip bones, and ran his tongue along the join between his leg and his body, down further and further. And when he finally touched the base of Loki’s cock, the moan he got in response made his own cock flex in response. He wrapped one hand around the silky length and stroked up the vein on the underside. Loki gasped and bucked upwards, and he wrapped his lips around the head, sucking in the taste of him, rolling his tongue all around him. He could feel Loki’s hips wanting to push up and into his mouth, and he moved down, slowly, bit by bit, bobbing down and moving back up, until he had to stretch his throat and concentrate, before taking his entire length.

When he pulled back, leaving Loki’s cock spit-slick and glistening, he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer. Loki pulled him up over his body and kissed him, and Tony lined his dick up with Loki’s and groaned to feel the slippery skin rubbing against his own aching body. He pulled away from the kiss and held Loki’s gaze as he licked his hand, then slipped it between their bodies. When it closed around them both he had to force himself to keep his eyes open and watch Loki’s head tip back in bliss. He squeezed them together, running his thumb across one head, then the other, rubbing the beads of precome until they mingled, and spreading them down across both of them, lubricating them further as they both moved their hips against each other, friction and slick, heat rising through their muscles. 

Tony forced himself to focus on the impossible, beautiful person beneath him, writhing in ecstasy just for him, and distracted himself from his building orgasm by watching Loki’s. He could see the whole universe in Loki’s eyes, hear all of time in the soft noises he made as Tony’s hand worked the two of them, took them up to the edge, and then, finally, he saw Loki come apart, all the walls and masks and pain disappeared in one fragment of a moment riding the wave. The sight was enough to send Tony following, chasing after him into the white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I PROMISE next chapter he'll get to meet the babies! I couldn't let him meet them while he was all overwrought, it would have been disastrous, so while it seems like Angrboda is being a bit of a bitch, I believe she's doing the right thing...


	14. Overdue Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki finally meets his children

Tony woke to Loki’s pacing. _One two three four - turn - one two three —_

“Lokes…hey, Loki. C’mere.” He opened his arms and pulled his Loki down onto the bed with him, feeling his muscles vibrating with tension. He buried his nose in his hair. “It’s going to be OK.”

“What…what if I…” He trailed off, and didn’t start speaking again.

“What, Lokes?”

“What if I am a disappointment? They have been raised for the last three years by this amazing witch, they have had three new siblings that they must adore, how…Tony, how can I be so cruel as to take them away from this?” His voice trailed away to almost a whisper and Tony tightened his arms around him. Of course one conversation wasn’t enough to dispel his fears. Two conversations wouldn’t either, not in the long run.

“You’re their _mom_ , of course they’re going to love you. And you absolutely adore them. You think they’re not going to pick up on that? Hey…look, they might not remember you, but their mom’s come back to get them, and that’s going to mean a hell of a lot.”

“And that is another thing,” he said, leaning up to look at Tony with wide, frantic eyes. “They have only known me as a woman, as their _Modir_ , and here I am as…just…Loki. Should…do you think I should take Loptr’s form again? I would do that, for the whole of my life, for them.”

Tony was about to jump in with some reassurances, but this question actually needed some serious thought. He frowned at the ceiling. “I don’t know, Lokes. But…when you’re Loptr, is that _you_ , or is it just Loki wearing a mask?”

“I…well, no, I’m still Loki. It’s just shapeshifting.”

“So when you’re Loptr you don’t even feel like a woman?”

He laughed. “I do not think it feels that different. It is all me, just with a different body.”

Tony scrunched up his face. “I’m really not the best guy to give you advice,” he admitted. “I’ve never felt anything other than male. Only I know that there are people on Earth who look in the mirror and don’t recognise themselves. Like they’re a man trapped in a woman’s body?”

Loki lay back down on his arm. “Perhaps it is different because I put myself in that body.”

“But you’re not a woman on the inside?”

“I’m just…Loki.”

It was Tony’s turn to laugh. “There’s no such thing as _just_ Loki. You can’t ever be a _just.”_

“This is not actually helping my decision,” he sighed.

“Well…what form do you prefer?”

“This one.” Great. A definite answer, no thought involved.

“Then I think you should introduce yourself as you are,” he said gently. “Kids are pretty flexible, aren’t they? Better they should learn who you are now rather than later and feel like you’ve been lying to them.”

Loki tensed in his arms and Tony had a flash of panic that he’d said totally the wrong thing, because that really wouldn’t be a surprise.

“You are right.”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” he snorted, trying to cover the breath of relief. “Genius, remember.”

Loki buried his face in Tony’s neck and groaned. “I of all people should know not to lie to my children.” He suddenly jumped up, back in a manic state, and Tony hid the worry deep down in case it made him worse. He started to climb out of bed, ready to get dressed and help Loki through the probably traumatic morning, when another thought hit him, and he sank back down.

“Loki…when you’ve got the kids, where do you plan to live with them?”

Loki froze and his eyes widened in horror. “I…I do not know. I…” He covered his face with both hands. “I have not been able to imagine having them back, I have not been able to think of it, oh, Norns, I am already failing to provide for them—“

“Hey, Lokes, Lokes, calm, it’s OK.” He rushed to rub Loki’s back and cleared his throat. “If…you know, I’m sure you’ve got places you want to be with them, and I’m sure there’s better homes than with some guy with too many tools and nothing baby proofed and a cabinet full of alcohol—but I can fix that! I can get all the baby kit, and I bet I can invent a robot that would assess any dangers before they happened, and we can fence off the pool, JARVIS can be watching them—“

“Tony,” Loki held him by both shoulders. “What are you saying?”

“Uh…would you guys like to live with me? You know…just for a little, and I’m sure it’s a terrible place to raise kids, and you know I’m probably useless with small humans, I’m pretty bad with big ones as well, and I’d make a mess of it and—“

Loki kissed him, tilting his face up to capture his lips and pulling him closer so they were pressed chest to chest. “Are you sure?” he whispered, pressing his head to Tony’s. “I…Tony, do not offer this from pity, because none need ever pity me again if I have my children back.”

“Pity—god, no, Lokes, it’s not pity…I…I like having you around, I’ve kinda got used to you in the house, and…” he sighed and stopped trying to be cool. “I would be lonely if you left. I…I really _really_ like having you around, you know?”

Loki smiled, and it was the biggest, happiest smile Tony had ever seen him wear. “I would like that, Tony…but will you agree to tell me if it gets too much? I would not be a burden on you.”

Tony nodded and snuggled into his arms, hiding his childish glee in Loki’s chest.

“And, Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“I really, _really_ like having you around, too.”

***

Angrboda crouched on the floor next to a serious looking little boy and a fidgety little girl, both with wide red eyes and blue skin. The boy in particular had puppy eyes to rival Loki’s. The man himself was standing across the room from them, his whole body trembling, trying to hold the tears back. Tony could see that he was fighting a loosing battle.

“You remember how I have told you often that your _Modir_ would come for you one day, and that you would be reunited with him?” The children nodded, and Angrboda held a hand out to indicate Loki. “Here he is. Will you say hello to him?”

“Hello, _Modir_ ,” they said in chorus.

Loki tried to speak, but his words were swallowed up with a sob, and he took a few tentative steps forwards before kneeling down in front of them.

“Why are you crying?” asked the little girl.

“I…I have missed you so much,” he smiled, his face soaking with tears.

“Would you like a hug?” the boy asked. “I give the _best_ hugs, and I’ve been saving a special one for you.”

Loki’s face crumpled and he nodded. The little boy trotted over to him and squeezed him as tight as he could. Where they touched, both their skin swirled white and blue, like the two forms were fighting for dominance. The little boy was the one to change, his skin exactly the same shade as Loki’s and his huge eyes the same blue-green. The little girl ran over and wrapped her chubby little arms around her brother and her mom, and flickered white as well. Her hair was more honey coloured, like Sigyn’s but her eyes matched Loki’s as well. Tony noticed her little leg popped up in the air as she cuddled her family and squeezed his face up. 

“Seriously, dude,” he muttered to Clint. “I can’t watch. They’re just too cute.”

Clint snickered beside him and Tony pretended not to notice him wiping his eyes.

“Why are you a boy now?” Loki’s son asked. “I can sort of remember you, but you were a girl.”

Loki looked at Angrboda in mild panic, but she just smiled serenely and nodded. “I can change my shape,” he admitted. “I could not have had you as a man…would you prefer me to be a woman again?”

The boy shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t mind. What else can you change into?”

“A…a magpie,” he said, sniffling, trying to get his emotions under control now the children had started talking about something so unimportant. “A fox…I suppose I could change into whatever animal I wanted.”

“Can you be a poo?” the little girl asked. Tony snorted and doubled over. Both kids looked at him and shrieked with laughter.

“Aww, Tones, you’re encouraging her,” Clint groaned. The teenagers were trying not to laugh, and Angrboda was rolling her eyes.

“As are all children of her age, she is obsessed with excrement.”

Loki looked around, completely blindsided. “I…I do not think I can…it is not really alive…”

“Are you coming to live with us?” the boy asked.

“No, if…if you will…that is, if you want, I was hoping you would come to live with me?”

“And me,” Tony added, putting his hand up.

“You guys moving in together officially?” Clint nudged him. “Bless. Young love.”

“Seriously?” Tony muttered. “I’m pretty damn sure you’re the youngest person here.”

“What about Boda and Hela and Fenrir and Jor?” the girl asked.

Angrboda bent down in front of her again. “We have long spoken of a time when you would leave this place. Your fate lies not in Jotunheim, but in all of Yggdrasil, with your _Modir_ , who has been without your blessings for too long. Do you remember how we have planned for this day?”

“But I don’t want to leave. I’ll _miss_ you,” she whined, and Tony saw how Loki’s face fell with panic and regret.

Angrboda glanced at him and must have seen it too, because she nodded at him slightly in reassurance. “And I will miss you. But were you to stay here, you would miss _Modir_ , and Narfi, wouldn’t you?” She sat cross legged in front of the pouting girl. Little kid couldn’t have been much more than three in human years, and Tony’s heart went out to her. Angrboda pulled her onto her lap, where she turned blue immediately. “Any change is hard, Vali,” she said, rocking her. “But it is necessary for us to grow. When you first came to me, a century ago, you missed _Modir_ and _Fadir_ very much, though you may not remember now. And very quickly, living here became your normal. That will happen again, when you live with your _Modir_.”

“Vali,” said Jor, stepping away from his brother and sister. “Would it help if I came with you for a while, to help you settle in?”

Vali looked up at him, little pouty bottom lip pinched between two fingers, and nodded. Jor turned to Loki. “Would that be acceptable, for me to ask for my boon now?”

Loki immediately turned to Tony, and though he was trying to keep his face neutral and not influence Tony at all, he could see the desperate pleading in his eyes, and nodded with an affectionate smile. “Sure thing, Slytherin. You’re all welcome, actually, we’ve got the space.”

Angrboda smiled at him, and this time it wasn’t that smug, knowing smirk, but a proper, pleased grin with dimples and sparkling eyes. “I thank you, Tony Stark, but Jor will benefit from space to stretch and become himself, while Loki will need to bond with his children away from me.” She turned back to Vali. “How about we have breakfast together, and you get to know your _Modir_ and Tony before you return to Midgard with them? And if it pleases you,” she added to Tony and Loki, “I will visit you in a few days’ time, for a couple of hours.”

“Sure,” Tony shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve got space.”

Breakfast reminded Tony of Japan, with some sort of starchy white pulse, succulent seaweed that popped between his teeth with a salty tang, and strips of smoked fish. It was delicious. Apart from a small pile of stuff that looked like sauerkraut and tasted of vomit - seriously, what the hell? The little kids sat on either side of Loki, swinging their feet on their high wooden stools and chattering to him about games they liked to play in the forest, their favourite books, the creatures that lived in the roof, and poo (Vali). Sometimes they’d change a subject so quickly that even Tony felt blindsided, and he was the king of mental multi-tasking. He’d never had much to do with kids, and now he was starting to wonder why he’d avoided them for so long, because they were fucking hilarious. Pepper calling him a child suddenly seemed a lot less insulting. Narfi was evidence of intelligence being genetic, talking about all the books he was reading. Tony made a mental note to order things like Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland, because Narfi kept his favourites in a little carved wooden box like they were precious gems. 

Tony wasn’t sure how this development thing worked. Narfi had been around the same developmental level as a human six year old (Clint and math assured him) for almost as long as Clint had been alive. Humans made these enormous leaps in development within months, but little half-Aesir-half-Jotnar godlings took their time over each stage, spending years learning to read, decades perfecting their speech, and over five centuries before they reached adulthood. Tony poked at his grains, suddenly feeling his heart sink. Even if Loki didn’t get bored of him, even assuming they wanted to stick around with an old man, he wouldn’t even see Vali get into grade school. And to Loki, living with Tony would be like watching a person wither and die from a terminal disease. 

Vali threw her head back in a peal of laughter at Fenrir, who was making faces at her across the table. Narfi joined in and the two of them bounced up and down on their stools, leaning over their plates and basically being silly and attention seeking. Tony couldn't help laughing. He thought about the time he’d spent in Mali when he was in his early twenties and at a loose end. Before he found out he hated deserts. He’d met the son of the hotelier on his first night and they hung out for the next three months, exploring Bamako and then Timbuktu, seeing ancient Mali Empire scrolls in little street side bookshops, taking trips to Gao and Hombori. Basically avoiding real life. When Salif went back to university in Italy that September, they’d lost touch, but Tony remembered him fondly. He would be Salif to Loki. He could cope with that. He smiled at him across the table as he gazed at his children. If he was lucky, he could spend the next ten, maybe even twenty years adoring this man and his ridiculous children, and when they moved on, when he got too doddery and started loosing his hair and his marbles, maybe they’d remember him like he remembered Salif.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...what do you think? Just one more short chapter to go from this fic before a short interlude and then another long Loki POV story!
> 
> You should know, these kids are basically my own, completely ridiculous, 3 and 6 year old. Only my eldest is a girl. This is one of the main reason for writing this series, to remind myself how awesome they are (as well as, sometimes, how utterly annoying lol!)


	15. Settling In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki takes his family home

Tony looked around. “Everyone ready to go, then?”

Angrboda nodded to Vali, who ran over to take Jor’s hand. The witch handed two large bags to Tony and Clint. “You keep your hands free for those of your children,” she smiled to Loki as he made to help, and immediately Narfi slipped his hand in Loki’s, smiling up at him. Loki smiled back, and Tony was sure he was going to burst with joy.

Hela and Fenrir came forwards to give the little kids and their brother a hug, looking a little teary eyed. Even Angrboda’s chin was doing a little wobble. Loki was trying to hide it, but his eyes were filling up and threatening to spill over. Narfi kept patting him and rubbing his back, and Tony wanted to _squish_ that kid, because he was just too damn adorable. 

Vali wasn’t coping so well. When Angrboda gave Vali one last goodbye hug, she burst into loud tears and clung to her. Angrboda stood, cuddling her extra tightly, then gently but firmly detached her and passed her over to Jor, looking a lot less composed. Loki looked like he was going to give the whole thing up as a bad idea, but she glared at him. “Go. She will calm. Children do this, and it is allowed, but go and get her settled quickly. There are detailed instructions for their daily routine in their bags, take from them what you will, but you are in charge now.”  
She stepped back, holding Hela and Fen’s hands tightly and smiling at the group, even as Vali screamed and held both hands back to Angrboda. “Goodbye, my darlings. I love you all.”

Tony, Clint and Jor came close enough to Loki and Narfi that they could hold onto him. “Go on, babe, you’re doing the right thing,” said Tony, and Loki closed his eyes. All of them stepped forwards, and their feet clattered on the polished wooden floor, leaving the log cabin one step and thousands of light years behind them.

“Well,” said Tony. “That was…that was successful.”

Loki looked at Jor, still struggling with the wailing Vali, and Tony could see he had no idea what to do. Luckily, Clint seemed to have some idea. “Hey, Narfi, right?” he asked, bending down to the boy’s height. “Want to come and choose your room?”

Narfi had been looking a little damp eyed himself, and Tony knew he would have to deal with a bunch of things soon enough, but he brightened up and nodded, running after Clint up the stairs. As his little hand slipped out of Loki’s, he twitched as if to grab him back. Then he turned, nodded once to himself, and reached forwards to take Vali.

The little girl was crying hard enough that she didn’t really notice when she changed hands. Loki started walking around the room, swaying and bending his knees with each step, singing one of the songs Tony recognised from his nightmares. As soon as he finished one song, he started another, and just kept walking around and around the living room, his long hair curtaining his face, his little daughter’s head tucked into his neck. Gradually her wails got quieter, turning into little sniffles, and at last to a mullish silence, and she relaxed into his shoulder, little hands clenching on his t-shirt rhythmically. He wiped the snot and tears off her face and made them disappear by magic, but didn’t try talking to her or anything, just kept up the walking and the singing and the rhythm.

Tony popped the suit and watched it fold up behind him into the case, then turned to Jor. “You want to find a room too?”

***

Kids. They’re fickle and a lot more resilient than they look. Tony and Jor got back downstairs after moving Tony and Loki’s stuff into one of the upstairs bedrooms, figuring Loki would need to be near his kids, leaving Jor the privacy of their old room on the ground floor, and Vali was already curled up, leaned against Loki, while he read to her from a colourful engineering textbook. Tony’s cheek twitched. They really needed to go shopping.

Clint and Narfi came running down the stairs. Narfi was chatting about the lake, apparently he’d never seen one that wasn’t frozen, and his voice fascinated Tony. The little boy put so much emphasis into his words, obviously copying the speech patterns and idioms of the adults in his life, trying to be so grown up, but it was only serving to show how very young he was. He ran to join his family. “Valiiiii. Do you want to see our room? It’s got pink blankets.” He spoke in a sing song voice, like an adult would to a child, and the little girl looked like she was pretending not to smile, ignoring her big brother. “And you can see the lake out the window.” He leaned closer to her and pressed his nose into her cheek and she squealed and wriggled, pushing him away.

Clint threw an armful of ski gear onto the sofa. “Right, I’m outta here. SHIELD sent me on leave because they thought I’d have some sort of reaction to Gamora talking about you, so I’d like to actually get to use it.”

Loki stood, leaving Vali to flop into the space he’d vacated. “I can transport you to Nebraska if you would like?”

Clint thought about it. “Actually, yeah, why not. Thanks.” He grinned at the kids. “We’ll have to get you two together with Lila and Coop for a play date some time.”

“You _do_ have kids. I knew it,” yelled Tony.

Clint rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you’re a genius.” He patted Jor’s shoulder. “Good to meet you, kid.”

“I hope to see you again. I plan on hounding you until you teach me to shoot that bow.”

“Your brother’s the hound, though, right?”

Jor snorted. “I walked into that one, didn’t I?”

Clint hugged the kids and punched Tony on the arm, then stood next to Loki. “Thank you, Clint,” Loki said. “I…thank you will never be enough.”

Clint patted his shoulder. “Tell you what, you keep an eye on my descendants for the next twenty generations or so and we’ll be good.”

“As long as I live.”

They disappeared with flicker of green and gold light and Tony turned to the three kids. “Pancakes?”

When Loki returned, the kitchen was a mess of eggshells, flour and spilled milk. He raised his eyebrows and laughed as Tony tried to flip a pancake and failed to make it leave the pan in any way. 

“Hey, don’t laugh, my pancakes are amazing.” 

But Loki didn’t stop smiling. The little, sad smiles Tony had got used to over the past month were drowned by this glowing, sweet, face splitting grin. He looked like a completely different person, and if it weren’t for the tears glistening in his eyes Tony would have thought he’d been magically fixed. He gave a spatula to Jor and went round the counter to wrap his arms around Loki’s waist and pull him gently into the living room. “You OK babe?”

“I have my children back,” he whispered.

“Yeah, you do.”

“I never thought…never dreamed that would be possible. How is this possible?”

“I don’t know,” he laughed. “How does it feel?”

“Unbearable.” His voice hitched and he buried his face in Tony’s hair. Tony squeezed him and rubbed his back. “I cannot think but that this is a dream, and I will wake up to find them gone, and I do not think I can handle it.”

Tony pinched his hip hard and he flinched slightly, like a human would if you’d tickled them. “It’s real, Lokes. Your babies are back. Hey,” he leaned back, wiping the tears off Loki’s cheeks and gazing into his pretty lagoon-blue eyes. “You know, it’s not all going to be perfect straight away. There are going to be hard bits. But that’s how you know it’s real, huh?”

Loki nodded and gave him another dimpled smile, pressing his nose and forehead against Tony’s. “Thank you,” he whispered. Tony leaned forward and kissed him, tucking their bodies together.

A little movement caught his attention and he turned to see Narfi peering around the archway at them, smiling. “What, kiddo?”

Narfi shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just nice.”

Tony grinned and pretended he wasn’t blushing. Didn’t kids think kissing was gross? “You’re adorable. C’mon. Let’s see if Jor’s done a better job with those pancakes than I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My eldest genuinely did the 'it's just nice' thing when my husband and I were snogging like teenagers in the hallway once...it was literally the most adorable thing, I had to immortalise it lol!
> 
> Soooooo...what do you think? I know what's going to happen in the sequels, I'm just majorly blocked and need to get them written, but I will try to get them up soon! I hope the end was OK! Thank you all sososososo much for reading and all your wonderful comments...seriously, some of them have been transcribed into my diary because I'm a needy nerd ;) Thank you again!


End file.
